158 The Catskill Fatrves.

Then it seemed to Job that the kitchen wall melted away,
and he saw the fall, framed in the ravine, with the hollowed
space below where he had crept many a time to catch the
spray. The banks were crusted with snow, dazzling and pure;
every tree and shrub sparkled with frozen drops; and the water
did not leap over the crag as in summer, but formed a sheet of
ice, as if Nature had fashioned out of the rocks a great organ,
and these were pipes for the winds to play.

Two hands linked together by an ice chain opened the doors
of the cascade—it seemed the most ordinary thing possible to
Job just then—and he looked into the recesses of the hills.
There sat the lovely Fairy of the Cascade bewailing her im-
prisonment by cruel Winter.

“He says it does me good, and makes me value my free-
dom in the spring all the more,” she moaned. “How I love
the sun for coming to release me! At present he is busy
in other parts of the world, you know. Winter is the most
suspicious tyrant. He would not allow me to visit you with
the other Fairies, because he did not trust me that I would
not run away and make myself a new channel in some other
ravine.”

Job longed to ask for his present, but was too shy.

Then a little voice behind him—it sounded like Nip’s—
inquired :

“ Where is Job’s Christmas gift ?”

The Fairy looked kindly at the boy.

“My gift is the magic pole, to help one leap ravines and
over the largest rocks. I shall save it for some other child,

now, because you already own it.”