n the
children working by the gravestones. All her efforts to calm him at
first failed, but after a bit she drew his thoughts to pleasanter
things, and he was not so certain after all that he had not been
deceived by the cunning of the moonlight and the shadows.

A long interval passed, and no further sign was given by the owner of
the house or his band of frightened children. Jimbo soon lost himself
again in the delights of flying and the joy of his increasing powers.

Most of all he enjoyed the quiet, starlit nights before the moon was
up; for the moon dazzled the eyes in the rarefied air where they flew,
whereas the stars gave just enough light to steer by without making it
uncomfortable.

Moreover, the moon often filled him with a kind of faint terror, as of
death; he could never gaze at her white face for long without feeling
that something entered his heart with those silver rays--something that
boded him no good. He never spoke of this to the governess; indeed, he
only recognised it himself when the moon was near the full; but it lay
always in the depths of his being, and he felt dimly that it would have
to be reckoned with before he could really escape for good. He took no
liberties when the moon was at the full.

He loved to hover--for he had learned by this time that most difficult
of all flying feats; to hold the body vertical and whirr the wings
without rising or advancing--he loved to hover on windless nights over
ponds and rivers and see the stars reflected in their still pools.
Indeed, sometimes he hovered till he dropped, and only saved himself
from a wetting by sweeping up in a tremendous curve along the surface of
the water, and thus up into the branches of the trees where the
governess sat waiting for him. And then, after a little rest, they
would launch forth again and fly over fields and woods, sometimes even
as far as the hills that ran down the coast of the sea itself.

They usually flew at a height of about a thousand feet, and the earth
passed beneath them like a great streaked shadow. But as soon as the
moon was up the whole country turned into a fairyland of wonder. Her
light touched the woods with a softened magic, and the fields and hedges
became frosted most delicately. Beneath a thin transparency of mist the
water shone with a silvery brilliance that always enabled them to
distinguish it from the land at any height; while the farms and country
houses were swathed in tender grey shadow