Yes, _they_ were real.

But what of Nannizabuloe, and the sand-hills, and the little parsonage to which that very morning he had turned to wave his handkerchief?
A bell rang, and the curtain rose upon a company of russet-brown elves dancing in a green wood.

The play was _Jack the Giant-killer_; but Taffy, who knew the story in the book by heart, found the story on the stage almost meaningless.

That mattered nothing; it was the world, the new and unimagined world, stretching deeper and still deeper as the scenes were lifted--a world in which solid walls crumbled, and forests melted, and loveliness broke through the ruins, unfolding like a rose; it was this that seized on the child's heart until he could have wept for its mere beauty.

Often he had sought out the trout-pools on the moors behind the towans, and lying at full length had watched the fish moving between the stones and water-plants; and watching through a summer's afternoon had longed to change places with them and glide through their grottoes or anchor among the reed-stalks and let the ripple run over him.