, and it became every minute
easier and easier. He simply flashed along without apparent effort. An
immense driving power had entered into him. He realised that he could
fly for ever without getting tired. His pace increased tenfold--
increased alarmingly. The possibility of exhaustion vanished utterly.
Jimbo knew now that something was wrong. This new driving power was
something wholly outside himself. His wings were working far too easily.
Then, suddenly, he understood: _His wings were not working at all!_

He was not being driven forward from behind; he was being drawn forward
from in front.

He saw it all in a flash: Miss Lake's warning long ago about the danger
of flying too high; the last song of the Frightened Children, "Dare you
fly out alone through the shadows that wave, when the course is unknown
and there's no one to save?" the strange words sung to him about the
"relentless misty moon," and the object of the dreadful Pursuer in
steadily forcing him upwards and away from the earth. It all flashed
across his poor little dazed mind. He understood at last.

He had soared too high and had entered the sphere of the moon's
attraction.

"The moon is too strong, and there's death in the stars!" a voice
bellowed below him like the roar of a falling mountain, shaking the sky.

The child flew screaming on. There was nothing else he could do. But
hardly had the roar died away when another voice was heard, a tender
voice, a whispering, sympathetic voice, though from what part of the sky
it came he could not tell--

"Arrange the pillows for his little head."

But below him the wings of the Pursuer were mounting closer and closer.
He could almost feel the mighty wind from their feathers, and hear the
rush of the great body between them. It was impossible to slacken his
speed even had he wished; no strength on earth could have resisted that
terrible power drawing upwards towards the moon. Instinctively, however,
he realised that he would rather have gone forwards than backwards. He
never could have faced capture by that dreadful creature behind. All the
efforts of the past weeks to escape from Fright, the owner of the Empty
House, now acted upon him with a cumulative effect, and added to the
suction of the moon-life. He shot forward at a pace that increased with
every second.

At the back of his mind, too, lay some kind of faint perception that the
governess would, after all, be there to help him. She had always tu