ory ways were a continual puzzle to
me in those days; I am not sure I quite understand them even now, myself
included.

We were up and off next day before the dawn. The sun rose as the wagon
reached the top of the hill; and there we paused and took our farewell
look at Old Jacob's Tower. My mother cried a little behind her veil; but
my aunt only said, "I never did care for earwigs in my tea;" and as
for myself I was too excited and expectant to feel much sentiment about
anything.

On the journey I sat next to an exceptionally large and heavy man, who
in his sleep--and he slept often--imagined me to be a piece of stuffing
out of place. Then, grunting and wriggling, he would endeavour to rub
me out, until the continued irritation of my head between the window
and his back would cause him to awake, when he would look down upon me
reprovingly but not unkindly, observing to the carriage generally: "It's
a funny thing, ain't it, nobody's ever made a boy yet that could keep
still for ten seconds." After which he would pat me heartily on the
head, to show he was not vexed with me, and fall to sleep again upon me.
He was a good-tempered man.

My mother sat occupied chiefly with her own thoughts, and my aunt had
found a congenial companion in a lady who had had her cap basket sat
upon; so I was left mainly to my own resources. When I could get my head
free of the big man's back, I gazed out of the window, and watched the
flying fragments as we shed the world. Now a village would fall from us,
now the yellow corn-land would cling to us for awhile, or a wood catch
at our rushing feet, and sometimes a strong town would stop us, and hold
us, panting for a space. Or, my eyes weary, I would sit and listen to
the hoarse singing of the wheels beneath my feet. It was a monotonous
chaunt, ever the same two lines:

"Here we suffer grief and pain,
Here we meet to part again,"

followed by a low, rumbling laugh. Sometimes fortissimo, sometimes
pianissimo; now vivace, now largo; but ever those same two lines, and
ever followed by the same low, rumbling laugh; still to this day the
iron wheels sing to me that same song.

Later on I also must have slept, for I dreamt that as the result of my
having engaged in single combat with a dragon, the dragon, ignoring all
the rules of Fairyland, had swallowed me. It was hot and stuffy in the
dragon's stomach. He had, so it appeared to me, disgracefully overeaten
himself; there were hundr