noon
`` Hast thou seen yet , my Nymphalin , '' said Fayzenheim , in the pauses of the dance , `` the recess of the Hartz , and the red form of its mighty hunter ? '' `` It is a fearful sight , '' answered Nymphalin ; `` but with thee I should not fear . '' `` Away then ! '' cried Fayzenheim ; `` let us away at the first cock-crow , into those shaggy dells ; for there is no need of night to conceal us , and the unwitnessed blush of morn or the dreary silence of noon is , no less than the moon 's reign , the season for the sports of the superhuman tribes . '' Nymphalin , charmed with the proposal , readily assented ; and at the last hour of night , bestriding the starbeams of the many-titled Friga , away sped the fairy cavalcade to the gloom of the mystic Hartz . Fain would I relate the manner of their arrival in the thick recesses of the forest , -- how they found the Red Hunter seated on a fallen pine beside a wide chasm in the earth , with the arching bows of the wizard oak wreathing above his head as a canopy , and his bow and spear lying idle at his feet . Fain would I tell of the reception which he deigned to the fairies , and how he told them of his ancient victories over man ; how he chafed at the gathering invasions of his realm ; and how joyously he gloated of some great convulsion * in the northern States , which , rapt into moody reveries in those solitary woods , the fierce demon broodingly foresaw .