Chapter III: Part 3

How I loved it when she was gone! If I sat at the right of my window, I could see the rounded top of my mountain quite black against a sky that was now very pale like an evening primrose. I remember the look of that sky so well because, when I look back, everything that was to happen in a minute seemed to be bathed in that light. If it had happened half an hour later I would have been frightened, because it would have been so dark, and it couldn’t have happened half an hour earlier, because Nellie would have been there. It all occurred at just the right moment, as things so often do in life. Well, I sat there reading, and everything grew quieter and quieter, so that I could hear the stream running over the pebbles at the bottom of the field, with a little tinkly sound of the fiddle coming up from the barn and even, I fancied, Miss Somerset’s snores from upstairs. But for some reason or another I couldn’t read; my own imaginations were stronger than the book, splendid though the book was. I was using my magic powers, I was holding my hand up to order the evening to stay still just as it was, as evening stayed still, you will remember in “The Sleeping Beauty.” There, they would all be for one thousand years, Nellie half way down the hill towards the dance, Miss Somerset snoring, the cows lying in the byre, the sheep in their pen, and two birds transfixed for ever in that primrose sky. I was feeling very powerful and very grand when in a moment the spell was broken, and a man appeared on the grass just outside the window, so close to me that if I had put out my hand I would have touched him.

They stood me in the middle of the floor.
]

The strange thing was that I wasn’t frightened at all, although his appearance would have frightened many a grown-up person. He seemed very large in that evening light, he had been running and was breathing hard, his clothes were ragged and torn, and he had no hat on his head. He didn’t say a word, but climbed over the window into the kitchen in a second of time. He didn’t seem surprised to see me, but bent down very close to me (he was a very tall man indeed) so that his face was right up against mine, put his hand on my shoulder with such a grip that he almost lifted me off my chair, and said “Don’t speak a word, or you’ll be the worse for it!” The odd thing was, that I liked his face, it was odd because he can’t have been beautiful to look at; his cheeks were rough and hairy, and his eyes were fierce, but it doesn’t matter, everyone is either a friend or not a friend from the first moment you see them and I hadn’t any doubt at all about him. “Of course, I won’t tell anybody,” I said getting off my chair, and I remember that I was so little frightened that I put the book down carefully on the window-sill so that it should come to no harm. He was, I think, astonished at my taking it so quietly, but he was too desperately alarmed to think of anything but his own danger. He stood lost and bewildered in the kitchen, looking about him as though he couldn’t pull himself together and make up his mind. Now, looking back, I should imagine that he wasn’t very old, quite a young fellow, but he seemed to me, of course, extraordinarily big and strong. His clothes had been torn partly off his back, and his shoulder was bare and bleeding, and I remember that he kept trying to pull up his rent coat over the shoulder, as though he would like to appear more decent and respectable. I expect it was only a nervous movement, and he didn’t know what he was doing. He realised, I suppose, that he must take me into his confidence, and that whatever happened he must reassure me, so he sat down in the big wooden arm-chair, and drew me towards him, and stood me between his knees. I remember as though it had happened only yesterday, that his trousers were torn, and his knees bare like his shoulder. He spoke to me then, very quietly (wonderfully quietly for a man pressed as he was) he told me that he was a stranger, this he impressed upon me over and over again. What kind of a stranger he was, he didn’t tell me, but I realised that his voice wasn’t like the voice of my father and my friends, and that although I could understand everything he said there was a curious twist once and again, that was like nothing I had ever heard before; but the point was that he was a stranger, and that he meant nobody any harm, but that they laughed at him, and that he stood as long as he could, and then they laughed at his country; that he could not stand, and so he had hit somebody. After that there had been a fight, and that he didn’t know what had happened, but he was terrible when his anger was roused, and that after all he was a stranger, that they were pursuing him now, all of them, with sticks and forks, and that if they caught him they would shut him up, and that he wasn’t going to be shut up, that he meant nobody any harm, and if they tried to shut him up he would kill them, so they had better look out, and that after all he was a stranger; that was what was the matter, and that if he hadn’t been a stranger they would never have touched him.

All the time that he was talking to me, he was looking into my eyes, and I was looking in his. He had his hands on my shoulders, and his bare knees pressed against my body, but he wasn’t hurting me, and his eyes asked me to help him, and my eyes answered that I would without my speaking a word. Indeed I think I would have gone with him anywhere; it is odd when I look back, but I believe that this man with the rough hair and the torn clothes, in his terrible state of fear and haste was the first person in all the world who had talked to me in that kind of way. Perhaps what drew us together, although I was too young to understand it, was the fact that I was a stranger in my own way too, a stranger to Miss Somerset and a stranger to my father and to many another who didn’t understand me nor what they called my funny ways. He took me on to his knee and held me close against him, as though I were the only safeguard he had in all the world, but I didn’t say a word but just waited for him to tell me what to do.

However, I hadn’t long to hesitate. We hadn’t been there for more than five minutes I suppose, when we heard the sound of voices. In another moment he was on his feet, gazing desperately about him. It had become suddenly dark, and all the voices seemed to swirl up on the grass plot outside the window. We stood in the shadow of the kitchen, and as though I had been a hundred years old, moving by instinct, I suppose, I had shown him a large empty cupboard in the farthest corner of the kitchen, and he was in it and the door closed, and it was as though he had never been.

I had the sense then (and I don’t know now where I got it from) to go quietly to the window and pick up my book. They all came rushing into the kitchen; the kitchen was filled with them. Mr. Andrew was there, and his sister, but they were mostly men all shouting and crying out and waving their sticks. At first they didn’t see me and then Mr. Andrew suddenly called out “Why, there’s the child.” I wasn’t frightened even then (this was all so much less than so many of my own imagined adventures) but they stood me in the middle of the floor, held up their lanterns to look at me, and began asking all kinds of questions. The point was that the fugitive, if he had come into the house, must have been heard by me. Had I heard anybody? I shook my head. Where had I been all the time? I had been sitting there by the window reading my book. Had I been there all the time? Yes, I had been there all the time. There was no entrance to the house, save through the kitchen or the front door just beside the window. In any case, he couldn’t be in the kitchen, he might be upstairs, so all of them rushed up to see. I could hear them hunting about upstairs, they even, I fancy, broke into Miss Somerset’s bedroom, then down they came again and, after a little more discussion, rushed out and up the road.

Mr. Andrew went with them. Nellie had, fortunately for her, joined the crowd with a number of the dancers, and now she and Miss Andrew were left alone with me. They were both of them tremendously excited; what exactly the stranger had done, I could not understand, but it was something very terrible. Forgetting me for a moment, they went upstairs to reassure Miss Somerset, and to see whether any damage had been done. In a moment I was at the cupboard door, and the stranger and I were alone in the room again, as though all those people had never been. He was quieter now he had been given time to breathe, he seemed to have made up his mind what he would do. I am ashamed to say that I robbed Miss Andrew, because I gave him half a loaf of bread and a piece of cold bacon, and all the time I never spoke to him and he didn’t say anything to me but just before he went, he caught me up in his arms, held me very tight, kissed me and, as he put me down, said in his funny broken voice some words in a foreign language that I didn’t understand at all, of course, but that meant that he approved of me. Then he was over the window-sill, on the grass, away under the stars, vanished. I hope he reached my mountain and that Black Jack looked after him until all pursuit was over. I don’t know; I never heard of him again, but I have a kind of idea that if I met him anywhere, even now, after all these years, I should recognise him. I hope, wherever he is, he is a stranger no longer. Many things that other people would call exciting, have happened to me since then, but to myself, that will always be the most exciting of all, and it is an adventure to tell you the truth, that isn’t yet ended.

POEMS _By HUGH CHESTERMAN_

PROUD SIR PIM

Sir Pim was proud, uncommon proud;
His friends and relatives allowed
That Proud Sir Pim displayed more pride
Than any other knight beside.

And nought there was could dull or dim
Or tarnish
The splendour of this proud Sir Pim:
His waist was slim, his harness trim,
His helmet shone from tip to brim
Like varnish.

And when he walked or rode abroad
The passers-by were overawed
And little boys and girls would stammer
(With slight regard for English grammar),
“That’s him—
That’s Proud Sir Pim!”

KNOWLEDGE

I remember ...
Twenty shillings in a pound,
Seven days in every week,
And once a year the earth goes round
The staring sun, and Chesapeake
Is _not_ a mountain but a bay
Whereto the Susquehanna flows,
And Potomac, and goodness knows
What other streams in U. S. A.!
And twenty quires make a ream,
And grouse, in plural, is not “grice,”
And Watt revealed the use of steam,
And John of Gaunt was married twice,
Canute and Charlemagne were kings,
And Martinmas is mid-November.

· · · · ·

But there are lots and lots of things
I _can’t_ remember.

Knowledge.
]

MAGIC CASEMENTS _By MADELEINE NIGHTINGALE_

From Tony’s house the ground slopes north, east, and south, for the house stands upon the spur of a ridge, and away on the left the long range of the Downs shoulder the sky, whilst on the right, miles northward, you can see Blackdown and Hascombe and on a clear day even Leith Hill and Newlands Corner. But due east a little steep hill road wanders away by gorse-strewn commons and under great spreading Sussex oaks, where you meet no one save perhaps a milch goat, trailing its long chain amongst the wayside bushes, or a cow or two wandered from their pasturage and “feeding their way home,” as the natives say. And this is, perhaps, Tony’s favourite walk. I am not quite sure why he so especially loves it, but I think, maybe, it is because that way lies the Silver Wood. For in the Silver Wood there once befell him a great and wonderful adventure; and the happening of it was in this wise:

* * * * *

It was early May, but the May of a backward year, and only the larches were in “proper green” (as Tony put it), though here and there a silver birch was shaking out her smallest crumpled leaves, and all about the commons and in the roadside hedges white bushes of blackthorn shone, and the old mushroom man had told Tony this was “blackthorn winter.” Then came two blazing days of unexpected summer, and on the second night, just as the clock in the hall struck one, Tony had wakened suddenly into moonlight bright as day and a world become, as it seemed, half Heaven by reason of the music with which it was filled.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” he whispered, and for an hour lay quivering with the wonder of it, until at last he could bear no longer the loveliness all alone, and, slipping out of bed, crept along the dark passage and scratched softly at his mother’s door. This scratching was an invention of his own, because, as he once explained, “The mice scratch and it doesn’t wake them, so if they are really asleep I won’t disturb them, and if they aren’t, why, they’ll know it’s _me_.” To-night, his father’s voice answered, prompt and wide awake. “That you, Tony? Come along!” He had crouched down under an eiderdown, and all three had listened until at last the chorus died down into silence, a cock from the valley crew welcome to the coming dawn, and a cow in the byre at the back of the house lowed as if in answer. Then Tony’s father had picked him up by the scruff of his pyjamas like a kitten, gathered him in his arms, and carried him back to bed.

“It’s the nightingales, old man,” said he, “and now to sleep and I’ll tell you all about them in the morning.”

Accordingly, next day, seated in his father’s study, whilst outside the sun shone and beckoned with long beams through the wafting curtains, he heard how Philomel, the nightingale, had come back from his winter quarters in Egypt or Syria or Northern Africa, and was last night voicing his return; how he loves dense coverts, and how skilfully he hides his nest; how the eggs are five in number, and of a brownish shade; and how, as he grows busy with the feeding and rearing of his young, his song decreases until at the end of the season, just before he leaves our shores, so hoarse has his voice become that he cannot sing at all, but only croak. And lastly, how he sings by day as well as night; only, because a thousand other birds are singing too, one scarcely recognizes him.

Tony had listened, interested and attentive; but when the instruction was over, a book had been taken down from its shelf, and verses more wonderful than Tony had ever heard before—as wonderful, indeed, as the nightingale’s songs themselves—were read to him in the wonderful way and wonderful voice which only his father had. “And that’s what John Keats thought about ’em, Tony, my son. Some day you shall tell me what _you_ think. But, there, off with you into the sunshine, and perhaps they’ll sing for you again to-night.” So did his father finish.

And Tony had gone, but now all the careful facts of the bird’s self and habits had drifted from his mind, and there remained to him only snatches of the poem John Keats had written and some dim realization of its glory and its joy.

In the afternoon he had borrowed the volume, going through the poem stanza by stanza, finding great portions which he in no way understood, but fastening, nevertheless, on the lines that most fascinated him, reading them again and again, until they were unmistakably his own.

“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

* * * * *

It was a fortnight later when the adventure happened. After the few hot days, the wind had swung anew into the north, and there had followed an extraordinarily cold week, at the end of which Summer asserted herself firmly, and upon this particular afternoon the air was quite sleepily warm.

The blackthorn had all blown away, and on the wayside banks only here and there a last primrose peeped out lonelily from its clump of green leaves, a little sorrowful it seemed, for the many brothers and sisters drooped and faded on their stalks at its side. The gorse was blazing though, all the oak-trees were green, and down in the woods there would be bluebells. Five or six larks carolled noisily overhead and Tony, too, was singing as he walked. He had his bow-and-arrow in case he saw buffalo, and over his back was slung a scout’s bag. For after tea the prairie nights got chilly, and he needed wood-chips for a fire in his wigwam at the bottom of the garden. He strode with large strides, but silently as befitted an Apache brave (though, for that matter, he cared little that over by Blackdown the Sioux were encamped. Were not the young men of his own tribe within call, should he need them, which was unlikely? Trust an Apache to keep or at any rate extricate himself from danger).

At the bottom of the hill he left the road and struck across the common. A large white goat was cropping grass down in the dip, and he paused to watch it critically.

“A strayed broncho!” said he. “And a fine one, too. I wish I had my lariat.” Then he slid his head through his bow, dropped the arrow in its quiver, climbed the stile of the Silver Wood, and promptly forgetting all about Indians, became himself again. For in the woods the flowers, shut out somewhat from the sun, are often weeks later than those of the hedgerows and open fields, and here everywhere was carpeted with primroses and dog violets, and the white stars of the wood anemone.

Tony gave a little crow of delight.

“Oh, I _do_ like it!” he said aloud.

Then he threw back his head and stared up into the trees, for somewhere above him he thought he heard a voice say, “So do I.” Nor was he mistaken. Astride a big branch that spread out half-way up the oak-trunk sat a small grey man, and Tony recognized him at once. It was the Woodcutter.

“Hello,” said Tony.

“Hello,” said the Woodcutter, and went on with his work, chopping away with his axe at the bough on which he was perched. But as he chopped at wood _between_ the tree-stem and himself, Tony felt a little anxious.

“You mustn’t do that, Woodcutter,” he said. “When the bough breaks——”

“The cradle will fall,” finished the Woodcutter; and even as he spoke the branch cracked loudly. “’Ware heads!” he shouted; and down it came, he with it, almost at Tony’s feet.

Tony sprang back in some alarm. He stepped forward again, however, almost immediately, to help the little man to his feet; but the Woodcutter, rather pettishly, motioned him away and proceeded leisurely to brush from his clothes the dirt, grass ends, and dried leaves which clung to them.

“Did it hurt you?” Tony asked, with much feeling.

The little man snorted.

“Try it yourself,” he said tartly.

“Well, I did warn you not to cut between the trunk and you,” Tony said presently, a little nettled by the other’s ungraciousness.

“It makes no difference where I cut,” the Woodcutter returned rather dolefully. “I fall just the same. Look at my head.” He turned sideways, and Tony saw that the back of it bulged in two enormous bumps.

“That’s why I can’t wear a hat. You see, they never quite go down before the next bump bumps them.”

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said gently. “But I can’t help thinking that if only you didn’t cut——”

“Oh, don’t say it all over again,” the Woodcutter cried irritably. “If you’re behind, you fall after; if you’re before you fall with. And after all, it’s soonest over if you fall with.”

Tony looked a little bewildered.

“I don’t see why you _should_ fall after,” he said at last.

“You must if you haven’t fallen before,” retorted the other.

Tony considered awhile.

“But that’s a joke,” he remarked at last.

“Oh, is it!” said the Woodcutter indignantly. “Try it. You’ll soon see.”

Tony shook his head. “No, thank you,” he said, and then, “I didn’t mean _that_ kind of joke.”

The little man grunted.

“I don’t think it’s any kind of joke,” he said huffily, and Tony, hopeless of explaining, changed the subject.

“Why did you cut such a beautiful branch?” He fingered the bright green leaves regretfully.

“It’s for my windows—wood-windows you know. Every wood has windows.”

“Windows?” Tony spoke doubtfully, but he pricked his ears as the little man went on.

“Yes. Windows. Magic casements.”

Tony’s heart began to beat faster.

“For the nightingale? _Their_ magic casements, I mean?”

The Woodcutter stared at him.

“Yes, of course,” he said. “Whose else?”

“I didn’t understand ... that you make them for yourself, I mean,” Tony said slowly. “Can I come and watch?”

The Woodcutter motioned him to shoulder one end of the bough, and raising the other himself, started off down the slope.

“You don’t altogether,” he said.

“Don’t altogether what?”

“Make them yourself. The material is there. You only need to use it.”

“Yes,” returned Tony after a pause, “I think I see that.”

“And that’s why it had to be specially beautiful,” he went on; “to fit in with the music, I suppose.”

The Woodcutter grunted assent and then plodded on in silence.

* * * * *

Now when you have climbed the stile of the Silver Wood, the path, all grass and primroses and violets, runs steeply down for 100 yards or so, and crosses in the dip a little brushwood bridge that spans the boggy bed of a small stream. On the other side you rise again, and almost at once on the left a lane turns at right angles, leading straightly through a plantation of silver birches. If you follow this, you come shortly into meadows, for the wood is narrow here. Fifty yards farther is another lane, cut through great oaks, and one trunk, topped and lonely, lies right across the way. Both these the Woodcutter passed by. The third lane is narrower, and the branches of the trees on either hand spread and so intermingle that, when they are in full summer foliage, the path beneath is dim and cool like the tunnels through the corn and bracken that the rabbits use. To-day, however, since the oak-buds had only just uncurled their crinkly leaves, the sun lay all along it, flecking and dappling it in a pattern of light and shade. And above was the same pattern, but fashioned of the leaves themselves against the sky. The Woodcutter halted for a moment. “Listen!” he said, and far away ahead, very faint and muffled, Tony heard a whistle, thin and sweet and repeated several times. Then came a little burst of gurgling song that set his shoulders wriggling with delight. And then all was still again.

“It’s a nightingale!” he cried.

The Woodcutter nodded.

“They love the quiet and lonely places, where no one goes. But _we’ll_ go, you and I, Tony o’ Dreams, and we’ll build a window there for them to charm.”

Tony stared, for it seemed to him odd that a little rough-clothed, rough-handed Woodcutter should be speaking in the language of a poet. “Do you know Keats, then?” he asked, and paused, ashamed of his astonishment.

The Woodcutter smiled.

“That’s not just John Keats,” he said, “it’s everyone, boy—everyone, that is, who looks and feels.”

“But John Keats _wrote_ it,” Tony persisted.

“Yes, but Keats only gathered what grows for all of us; gathered and thought on it and put it into words. It’s _ours_ as well as his. That’s why we love it so.”

Tony pondered this very seriously.

“Suppose”—he said—“suppose I gathered something and thought on it; could _I_ ever put it into words—into words, I mean, like those?”

The Woodcutter did not answer at once, and Tony waited patiently, listening as he walked to the soft pad of their feet on the grass, the pipe of an occasional chaffinch, the coo of a wood-pigeon, the quiet stir of the trees and the rustle of a rabbit here and there amongst the undergrowth.

“I dare say,” the little man said at last. “Maybe, they’d come to you somewhere, somehow, as they came to him. I cannot tell.” He lowered his end of the branch and suddenly flung his arms wide.

“Listen!” he cried. “Can you hear?”

Tony regarded the strange little figure wonderingly.

“I can hear. Yes. Lots of things,” he answered after a while. “The trees and the wind, and the birds and the rabbits; and ... sometimes I think I can hear the clouds and the flowers and the sunshine. But I can’t quite tell what they say.”

“_Listen_ then,” said the Woodcutter again; “listen to them, and one day perhaps you _will_ understand the language, so that their words shall come to be your own.”

He raised the bough again and trudged off, and Tony, absorbed in his own thoughts, followed in silence until the whistle of another nightingale, quite near at hand, roused him.

The lane now had dwindled to a narrow path, and on either hand all tangled round the grey lichened trunks of the trees was so dense an undergrowth of bramble, honeysuckle, and little springing birches that he and his companion seemed shut out from all the world. But far ahead, at the path’s end, a little patch of white gleamed like a pool in a green field.

The Woodcutter pointed to it.

“See!” he cried. “A magic casement! I must frame the sky.”

In a moment he had his branch flat upon the ground and was chopping vigorously, measuring, tenoning, fitting, until—so swiftly as to seem indeed magical—the magic casement was complete. Tony laid hands upon one side of its square frame to help bear it to its destination, but the Woodcutter shook his head.

“The nightingales know _me_,” he said, “but I must go alone. When it is fixed, perhaps for you also the charm will charm. Wait.”

And so Tony waited, sitting by the side of the path on a mat of new white wood-chips with his back against a tree.

Then quite suddenly the nightingales called him. Springing to his feet, and flinging away his bow and quiver because they hindered him, he raced down the path as fast as his legs could carry him.

At the end of it, round the little patch of sky, was the magic casement exactly as the Woodcutter had made it; but the Woodcutter was gone. There was no one here now but himself and the nightingales; and the nightingales, as they had sung that night when he heard them first, were singing all together, so that the very air was quivering with music. For fully a minute Tony stood quiet, quivering too, his hand on the window-sill, almost afraid to look. And then he looked, and knew that it was all right. For him also the charm had charmed. For in front of him stretched long, shining sands and beyond them a great sea. And the sea was all spangled with wave crests that the moonlight caught. And across both sands and sea a silver way ran, broad and straight, to the horizon and then onward endlessly into the beyond. But sometimes as he looked the bright silver of it blurred for a moment as the spray-scud drove across it like a cloud. Some of the spray drove inland too, for Tony’s face grew moist with it, and when he touched his lips and fingers with his tongue the taste of them was like salt.

“The same that oft-times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.”

he chanted softly.

Then he clambered upon the sill, balanced for a moment or two with his legs dangling, dropped through, and set off slowly across the lonely sands. Far ahead he could see, in the moonlight, line after line of breakers and, a little nearer, the ebbing, flowing ripple of their fringe. Here and there about the shore were strewn great rocks, which, as he approached, towered jet black against the violet sky and threw shadows as black as themselves upon the sands below. Some had little pools around their base, and at one of them he stopped, doffed shoes and stockings, and, standing with his tired feet cool in the soft water, stared thoughtfully across this new and wonderful sea that he had found.

“Perilous?” he said at last. “The billows don’t roar very angrily, and it’s too beautiful to be perilous, I think.”

“Ah, but you’re thinking backwards way, Master Tony; it’s perilous just because it _is_ so beautiful.”

Tony jumped. He had felt himself so utterly alone, and yet the voice sounded at his very elbow. Then he stared in amazement, for at his side stood a little old woman in a mob cap and a long grey cloak, half dusty, half sheeny, as cobwebs are. In her hand she carried a kind of wand with a bright end to it which shone just like a star.

“Are you the Queen Moon?” he asked her, remembering his Keats; but she burst into a laugh and began to dance with most astonishing agility, wetting him all over as she splashed the water with her long, sharp-toed shoes.

“Queen Moon, indeed!” cried she, and pointed to the sky. “Not I! Don’t you see? The Queen Moon is on her throne, clustered about with all her starry fays.” She shook her wand in his face. “As for this! Did you think it was a star? Look! It’s an elf-stone! Turn your coat, Tony, turn your coat! I’m a fairy.”

Tony had often heard of elf-stones, and once his father had seen one. A cow had been found dead in the pasture, and the old cowman had brought up to the house a little bright piece of flint, triangular and barbed on each side like an arrow head. “’Tis elf-shot she be, surely, and never a mark on her to show,” he had said. “But there ’twas, alongside—the fairies’ arrow-point.” And the old fellow had begged that he might keep it, hanging it round his neck as an amulet against a like fate falling on himself. Here, sure enough, was the flint just as Tony had pictured it. He took the wand rather gingerly and examined it, giving it back to her at last, with a little laugh. “I’m not afraid of fairies,” he said stoutly. “So I won’t need to turn my coat. But who _are_ you, then? Queen _Mab_?”

“No, nor yet Queen _Mab_,” she retorted, mimicking his accent; “just _Mistress_ Mab, an it please you.”

She dropped a little curtsey and her grey cloak spread out all about the water and dripped a hundred tiny silver rivulets as she rose again to her small height.

“But everyone _says_ Queen,” he persisted.

“Everyone is wrong, then,” she answered, and paused and heaved a sigh.

“And yet,” she went on, “Queen Mab it _is_, perhaps—Queen by courtesy. But Queen only of men’s dreams.”

Tony made a low bow, stepped out of his pool and dropped upon one knee.

“Then,” said he, “at least you are _my_ Queen.”

“And why?”

“Because,” he said, rather red and shy, “because of my name, you see. Tony o’ Dreams, they call me. So I must be _your_ knight, mustn’t I?”

“I see,” she said gently, and both were silent, she as well as he, gazing seaward to the fringe of foam. Suddenly she laid her hand upon his shoulder.

“Well then, small knight,” she cried, “and what of the perilous seas?”

Tony shivered. “I’m not afraid,” he said, “only ... they are so beautiful. _Must_ all that’s beautiful be perilous too?”

“But of course! Perilous—to be adventured—to be tried and made your own!”

“Oh but perilous? Does perilous mean that?” he asked quickly.

“Why, yes—what else?”

Tony pondered.

“I thought quite differently,” he said at last. “I thought it meant dangerous.”

She caught him up almost before the words were out of his mouth. “Ah, no! Not dangerous. Beauty—real beauty is safer, surer than all other things in all the world. Remember that, Tony, now and always. Come, will you sail these perilous seas with me for faery lands, so lost, so lost—for faery lands forlorn?”

He looked at her without speaking, and suddenly she began to sing:

“Away, away and away we go,
Away by ourselves, away!
For it’s somewhere hid ’twixt the sea and sky
That the long-lost lands of faery lie,
And I know if we sail there, you and I,
We shall find them one fine day.”

As she ended, the moon slid behind a cloud, and in the sudden darkness she tugged his hand.

“Fly, Tony! Spread your wings and fly!” she cried, “lest we grow old and tired before we come there.”

Eagerly he stretched out his arms, straining up on tiptoe. In a moment the ground was gone from beneath his feet and, lightly as a bird, he was gliding onward through the air, the scud wet upon his face again and the sweet salt smell of the sea growing stronger and stronger as he breathed.

He shut his eyes the better to enjoy the delight of it, and it seemed quite a long time later when Queen Mab pulled his arm again to rouse him.

“Now you can hear the billows,” she said.

Listening, he caught the rhythmic roar of them deep down below, and clutched her hand more tightly for the thoughts they raised.

“You’re frightened!” she jeered.

“No,” he answered simply. “I love it. That’s all.”

“Come, then, and we’ll sail.”

They began to drop rapidly, and just as Tony’s feet touched ground the moon came out again and showed him the foam-fringe of the sea curling and glistening round his ankles. A yard or so away, quivering in water almost deep enough to float her, lay a little boat in which Queen Mab already sat.

“Push off, Sir Tony Knight,” she said, “and spring aboard.”

He pushed and clambered, falling perhaps rather clumsily over the gunwale, but picking himself up without so much as a rub of his bruised elbows and settling the oars in the rowlocks neatly, as a Cornishman’s son should.

“That’s right, Tony! Pull! Pull hard!” his companion whispered. “For on these faery seas, most often whilst we strive it is that the winds blow us where we will.”

Tony looked back at her over his shoulder.

“I _am_ pulling,” he said. “But only a very little, I think. The boat moves of itself.”

She leaned forward and pinched his cheek.

“And what is the wind but your spirit,” she demanded, “decked in a lovelier name?”

He shook his head.

“I don’t understand, Queen Mab,” he said, but went on pulling long even strokes as his father had taught him, until the soft creak-creak of the rowlocks and the drip of the water from the blades made a sleepy music, and he fell to humming softly to keep himself awake. Even this, it seemed, began to fail, and shipping his oars, he turned at last to his companion to tell her how tired he was and to ask whether it would be unknightly if for two minutes he should curl up at the bottom of the boat and sleep his sleepiness away.

And then he rubbed his eyes in amazement and all his sleepiness passed as completely as the spray scud passed across the moonshine, for her seat was empty and he was all alone.

“Queen Mab!” he shouted. “Queen Mab! Ahoy!” But there was no answer except the roar of the surf far behind him, and the lap of the water against the sides of the boat. A little tremor took him, and clambering to the bows he knelt there, staring ahead. Then he stretched out both his hands and spoke:

“Oh, faery lands—faery lands forlorn. It wasn’t I that lost you, was it? If it was, I’m sorry, but I’ve come to find you now. Don’t hide yourselves away from me too long.”

And all in a moment it was day again and the sun was shining. And when he stared—out of the horizon, it seemed—rose a long low bank of green. At first he thought it was faery land itself coming towards him in answer to his call. Then he realized it was a great wave, and with a rush came back the memory of a certain day last year. He was in his uncle’s yacht. A storm had overtaken them and, huddled behind a hatch, he had sat with his father, listening to the shrieks of the wind and the deafening rattle of every stay and rope the little vessel carried, and wondering whether it was really he who sat there, or some boy in a book. And how, poking his head round the hatch, he had seen just such a wall of green water rushing down upon him then. The yacht had buried _her_ nose in it and the green had sluiced along the deck on either side, churning as it went, and poured over the stern. In just such a way did his own little boat now bury her nose, only not her nose merely, but the boat and he and all went in. And the water parted itself into a square opening, and as he tumbled through—lo and behold, it was the magic casement; and here was the wood again, and it wasn’t the bottom of the sea at all, but just his heap of wood-chips from which he picked himself up, a little dazed and confused. And the magic casement slid away from him along its “verdurous glooms and winding mossy way,” until it was once more only a pale patch of light where the path’s end touched the sky.

His bow and quiver hung in a bramble just where he had flung them when he raced away, and he gazed at them a long while before he gathered and slung them on his back.

A nightingale whistled somewhere to the left. He waited for its burst of song, standing listening with his head flung back. Up the path the magic casement seemed to beckon him, but as the music ended he knew suddenly that he was tired and hungry.

“Oh, nightingales!” he cried, “I know! I know! And beyond, the seas _are_ very perilous. I shall come again. But, you see, I’m not a very valiant knight. Even as it was, I failed. I was so tired, I stopped rowing and almost fell asleep. And now I’m tireder than ever. And perhaps I was nearly there.”

He blinked furiously because his tiredness made his eyes blur a little, and he was afraid he might think he was crying.

“I—I shall shoot buffalo on my way home,” he said. Then he filled his scout’s bag with the white wood-chips and set off.

POEMS _By HUGH CHESTERMAN_

SETTING THE THAMES ON FIRE

You’ve heard of Tovey Trant, Esquire,
Who tried to set the Thames on fire
And would not be dissuaded
From dropping lighted matches in,
With candle-ends and paraffin
And all the things that servants use
For lighting fires that refuse
To burn unaided?
He started his experiment
At Erith on the coast of Kent,
And when it wouldn’t burn he tried
At Purfleet on the Essex side
(For Tovey _was_ a trier).
He tried at Cleeve (near Nettlebed),
And then again at Maidenhead,
But all the people watching said,
“Go higher, Trant, go higher!”
So up he moved to Hurley Mill
And then to Caversham, and still
The stupid stream would not ignite;
Although he tried with all his might
He _could_ not set the Thames alight,
And that there’s no denying.
He tried at Stoke, and then a spot
Near Wallingford, and Wolvercot,
Again at Bablock, and so up
To Shifford, Rushy Lock and Thrupp,
And Inglesham. At Water Hay
He neared the source, and there, they say,
Poor Tovey’s still a-trying.
HUGH CHESTERMAN

Setting the Thames on fire.
]

THE WANDERER

What open ways before him lie!
High hills where Earth with Heav’n meets,
And shining downs where plovers cry,
Or idle towns with crooked streets.

But vain to ask which way have gone
Those vagrant feet—for no one knows
What urgent star compels him on,
Nor whence he came—nor where he goes.
HUGH CHESTERMAN

The Wanderer.
]

THE WRANGLERS

There was a man of Languedoc
Who had a friend in Wapping;
For seven hours by the clock
They’d argue without stopping;
They’d talk of this and tell of that,
And contradict each other flat
On any given topic.
And if the one did introduce
A subject deep or too abstruse,
The other fell to sharp abuse,
And tempers would grow “tropic.”
“I’d sooner argue with a block!”
Protested he from Languedoc.
“For all I care, my friend, you can,”
Replied the wrathful Wapping man.
HUGH CHESTERMAN

The Wranglers.
]

MOTHER CHRISTMAS _By ROSE FYLEMAN_

“My dear,” said Mother Christmas, “it’s no use. You can’t go.”

“Nonsense,” said Father Christmas. “Of course I shall go. I’ve never missed yet. The children would never get over it.”

“Then let _me_ go,” said Mother Christmas. “It’s absurd for you to think of it with a cold like that on you. I can manage perfectly. After all, it was I who packed up all the presents and I know exactly where to take them.”

“And how are you going to manage the reindeer, I’d like to know, with all those telegraph wires about?” said her husband. “No, my dear, it’s a man’s job. I shall be all right. Mix me a hot drink and I’ll have a five minutes’ snooze by the fire before I start.”

It made him very sleepy.
]

Mother Christmas said no more, but there was an odd gleam in her eye as she mixed Father Christmas’s glass of hot lemon and water. It’s my belief she put something more than lemon into the hot water; however that may be, it certainly made him very sleepy. The five minutes’ snooze lengthened into ten—fifteen—twenty. Mother Christmas was moving about the room very quietly and softly. She wrapped herself up in all manner of woollies, and at last put on her husband’s great red coat and hood all trimmed with white fur, and stole quietly out of the door.

Plup, plup, plup—there was a noise of light hoofs flying over the snow.

Plup, plup, plup—softer and softer it grew. At last it died away.

Father Christmas still slept by the fire.

* * * * *

When he woke up it was quite dark, and it didn’t take him many minutes to realize what had happened. He hurried to the reindeer shed—empty.

The snow was falling thickly. He was terribly upset. What was to be done? He had no other sleigh and no other reindeer, and of course it was impossible to follow his wife down to earth on foot.

Finally he decided to ring up the Fairy Queen. She was always so kind and helpful.

“Please, your Majesty,” he said when he had got through, “I’m nearly distracted. My wife insisted upon taking out the Christmas presents because I had such a cold, and I’m so afraid she may get lost, or stick somewhere.”

“Dear, dear,” said the Queen. “Hold the line a minute while I tell the head of the look-out department to put on his million-horse-power-wireless-radio-telescope-spectacles in order to see where she is.” In a minute or two came news.

“She’s caught on some telegraph wires.”
]

“She’s caught on some telegraph wires and the reindeer and the sleigh are all tangled up in them. He can see them quite plainly. What would you like me to do?”

“Oh dear, oh dear,” said poor Father Christmas. “I’m afraid the only thing to do is to cut the wires, and the wire-cutter is in the tool-box under the seat of the sledge. She’ll never think of that.”

“Would you like me to send her a message?” said the Queen.

“Oh, your Majesty, if you _would_ ...” said Father Christmas.

So the Queen sent down a messenger at once with instructions about the wire-cutter.

* * * * *

Mother Christmas was in a dreadful tangle. She simply could not get out, and the reindeer were kicking and plunging in a most troublesome way.

Large snowflakes were falling. They fell on to Mother Christmas’s hair and nose and spectacles.

She put up her hand to brush one off her ear.

“Hi,” said a tiny voice. “You mustn’t treat me like that. I’m a Queen’s Messenger.”

Mother Christmas took off her spectacles and wiped them and put them on again.

A tiny dapper little person sat on the rail of the sleigh. He really did look rather like a snowflake in his snug white cap and ulster, but he was very much alive.

“The wire-cutter’s in the tool-box under the seat,” he said, and was off like a flash. He wanted to get home to bed I expect. And so Mother Christmas got back safely after all, and she had delivered all the presents too. You may guess what a welcome she received from her husband and what a lot the reindeer had to talk about to one another before _they_ went to sleep.

* * * * *

“There must have been a terrible gale last night,” people said on Christmas morning. “Quite a lot of telegraph wires are down.”

The head of the listening department in Fairyland heard them and told the Queen what they said. How she laughed!

FUNNY LOO _By EDITH SITWELL_

“Whose tears are running
Down the window-pane?”
“Never mind,” said funny Loo—
“It is the King of Spain
Who is weeping tears of gold
To wake the crocus cold” ...
Then, running like bunnies in the warm spring rain
My thoughts go lumping out to Timbuctoo,
They steal gold cherries from a pirate crew,
They steal golden wool from the trees for you—
Then through the green fields of corn go running home to Loo.

“Whose tears are running
Down the window-pane?”
]

A THING TO BE EXPLAINED _By LAURENCE HOUSMAN_

When Professor Braintree and his granddaughter Elfrida took a walk together, there was only one thing in which they were alike: they both took short steps. But even when they thus agreed, they did it for different reasons: he because he was so old, she because she was so small. And in that point of likeness, which had two such different reasons at the back of it, you get a picture of their characters—they were as different as different could be, and yet they got on together. It may have been that each had a way of appearing to pay attention while the other talked, and so made good company together; or it may simply have been that Elfrida liked him because he was so old, and that he liked Elfrida because she was so young; it is a great relief, at times, to get away from yourself by being with something quite different.

As they walked together Elfrida’s voice seemed to come up to him out of the ground, and his voice seemed to her to come from the trees; yet it was really just the other way, for he had his mind in the ground, and she had her mind in the trees; and his words were pebbles of wisdom, dug up by long experience and worth a great deal, and hers were like loose fluttering leaves blown down from the trees, and worth nothing because they meant nothing, except that she was happy at being alive. The Professor wasn’t happy at being alive; but he didn’t want to die, all the same.

And all this time they had been taking short steps together, going through the wood, and each looking at things in their own way, and having their own names for them.

“Oh, Grandpapa!” cried Elfrida suddenly. “Did you see? That was a fairy!”

“No, it wasn’t, my dear, it was a tiger-moth. Its proper name is—you wouldn’t remember its proper name if I told you.”

“Does it have babies?” inquired Elfrida.

“No, my dear, it has eggs; but we don’t eat them.”

But Elfrida had seen something which seemed to her much bigger than a tiger-moth, and the thought of eggs disappointed her.

“Do fairies only have eggs?” she asked anxiously.

“Fairies don’t have anything,” replied her grandfather: “they don’t exist. They only live in story-books. When you come back to London you shall begin to learn natural history; then you won’t think about fairies any more.”

“But Grandpapa,” said Elfrida, “how do you know there are no fairies?”

“Because,” said he, “if there were fairies I should have discovered them.”

From which remark the reader will perceive that though a very wise and learned, he was also a very conceited old man.

Perhaps he had a right to be, for he was one of the most celebrated living scientists of his day, though his day is now over; and he had discovered a great many things about nature—animal nature, and bird nature, and insect nature—that had never been discovered before. He was so great that correspondents, writing to him from all over the world, had to put after his name the magic letters O.M., which is the Buddhist word for God, I believe, but in our language means something a little different.

He was rich, and he lived in a large house on the borders of Richmond Park, where his study looked out upon trees. And in it he had microscopes and spectrographs, and dictaphones, and a lot of other instruments which, if I tried to name them, I should get wrong. But they helped him to hear things, and see things, and know things more minutely than they had ever been heard or seen or known before. It was said that he was the only man in the world as yet who had been able to see an atom, and hear the sound of an electron; and as these are about a million times smaller than anything you or I have ever seen, and make less noise than the smallest flea when it is dead, it is no wonder he should have thought that, if there were fairies, he would have discovered them.

All the same, if this is a true story, Professor Braintree was wrong. But it does not follow that he was mad, though to his dying day he believed that if it was true mad he must have been.

And now, having taken all these short steps to be in the Professor’s whereabouts, we can get on with the story. The next day he went back to his house at Richmond, leaving Elfrida with her relatives. She was to return three days later. And grandfather and grandchild, being parted, each made the best of their time; but they no longer kept step together, as news from Elfrida will presently tell.

The Professor, from the moment of his return, was kept very busy with his correspondence, which had got into arrears—so busy, in fact, that when on the evening of the second day a letter arrived from Elfrida he had not time to open it, and so it came about that he did not read it till the morning of her arrival.