The streaming gale drove him forward as a ship at sea. He ran lightly, without fatigue or troubled breath. Dimly above him he presently saw the seven trees, dipping and louting to the weather; but as he neared them they had no meaning for him, did not, indeed, exist. For now he saw more than they, and otherwise than men see trees.
In a mild and steady light, which came from no illumination of moon or stars, but seemed to be interfused with the air, in the strong warm wind which wrapped the fell-top; upon a sward of bent-grass which ran toward the tarn and ended in swept reeds he saw six young women dancing in a ring. Not to any music that he could hear did they move, nor was the rhythm of their movement either ordered or wild. It was not formal dancing, and it was not at all a Bacchic rout: rather they flitted hither and thither on the turf, now touching hands, now straining heads to one another, crossing, meeting, parting, winding about and about with the purposeless and untirable frivolity of moths. They seemed neither happy nor unhappy, they made no sound; it looked to the lad as if they had been so drifting from the beginning, and would so drift to the end of things temporal. Their loose hair streamed out in the wind, their light gossamer gowns streamed the same way, whipped about their limbs as close as wet muslin. They were bare-footed, bare-armed, and bare-headed. They all had beauty, but it was not of earthly cast. He saw one with hair like pale silk, and one, ruddy and fierce in the face, with snaky black hair which, he thought, flew out beyond her for a full yard's measure. Another had hazel-brown hair and a sharp little peering face; another's was colour of ripe corn, and another's like a thunder-cloud, copper-tinged. About and about they went, skimming the tops of the grasses, and Andrew King, his heart hammering at his ribs, watched them at their play. So by chance one saw him, and screamed shrilly, and pointed at him.
Then they came about him like a swarm of bees, angry at first, humming a note like that of the telegraph wire on a mountain road, but, as he stood his ground, curiosity prevailed among them and they pried closely at him. They touched him, felt his arms, his knees, handled his clothing, peered into his eyes. All this he endured, though he was in a horrible fright. Then one, the black-haired girl with a bold, proud face, came and stood closely before him and looked him full into his eyes. He gave her look for look. She put a hand on each shoulder and kissed him. After that there was a tussle among them, for each must do what her sister had done. They took a kiss apiece, or maybe more; then, circling round him, they swept him forward on the wind, past Silent Water, over the Edge, out on the fells, on and on and on, and never stopped till they reached Knapp Forest, that dreadful place.