"Two thousand years?" asked Churchill. "You don't mean to say-"

Maxwell made a quick motion of his head in an attempt to silence him.

Mr. O'Toole stopped in the middle of the path and I threw Churchill a withering glance.

"I can recall," he said, "when the barbarians first came, most rudely, from that fenny forest you now call Central Europe to knock with the hilts of their crude iron swords upon the very gates of Rome. We heard of it in the forest depths where we made our homes and there were others then, but dead long since, who had heard the news, some weeks after its transpirance, from Thermopylae."

"I am sorry," Maxwell said. "Not every one is as well acquainted with the Little Folk..."

"Please," said Mr. O'Toole, "you acquaint him, then."

"It's the truth," Maxwell said to Churchill, "or, at least, it could be. Not immortal, for they eventually do die. But long-lived beyond anything we know. Births are few- very few, indeed, for if they weren't there'd not be room for them on Earth. But they live to an extremely ripe old age."

"It is," said Mr. O'Toole, "because we burrow deep to the heart of nature and do not waste precious vitality of spirit upon those petty concerns which make wreckage of the lives and hopes of humans."

"But these," he said, "are dolorous topics on which to waste so glorious an autumn afternoon. So let us fasten our thoughts, rather, with great steadfastness, upon the foaming ale that awaits us on the hilltop."

He lapsed into silence and started up the path again at a more rapid pace than he had set before.

Scuttling down the path toward them came a tiny goblin, his multicolored, too-large shirt whipping in the wind of his headlong running.