ranging in price from
three farthings upwards. The tree under which I sat was an old friend.
There was a hole at its base that I knew well. Two roots covered with
exquisite moss ran out from each side, like the arms of a chair, and
between them there accumulated year after year a rich, though tiny
store of dark leaf-mould. We always used to say that fairies lived
within, though I never saw anything go in myself but wood-beetles.
There was one going in at that moment.

"How little the wood was changed! I bent my head for a few seconds,
and, closing my eyes, drank in the delicious and suggestive scents of
earth and moss about the dear old tree. I had been so long parted from
the place that I could hardly believe that I was in the old familiar
spot. Surely it was only one of the many dreams in which I had played
again beneath those trees! But when I re-opened my eyes there was the
same hole, and, oddly enough, the same beetle or one just like it. I
had not noticed till that moment how much larger the hole was than it
used to be in my young days.

"'I suppose the rain and so forth wears them away in time,' I said
vaguely.

"'I suppose it does,' said the beetle politely; 'will you walk in?'

"I don't know why I was not so overpoweringly astonished as you would
imagine. I think I was a good deal absorbed in considering the size of
the hole, and the very foolish wish that seized me to do what I had
often longed to do in childhood, and creep in. I _had_ so much
regard for propriety as to see that there was no one to witness the
escapade. Then I tucked my skirts round me, put my spectacles into my
pocket for fear they should get broken, and in I went.

"I must say one thing. A wood is charming enough (no one appreciates it
more than myself), but, if you have never been there, you have no idea
how much nicer it is inside than on the surface. Oh, the mosses--the
gorgeous mosses! The fretted lichens! The fungi like flowers for
beauty, and the flowers like nothing you have ever seen!

"Where the beetle went to I don't know. I could stand up now quite
well, and I wandered on till dusk in unwearied admiration. I was among
some large beeches as it grew dark, and was beginning to wonder how I
should find my way (not that I had lost it, having none to lose), when
suddenly lights burst from every tree, and the whole place was
illuminated. The nearest approach to this scene that I ever witnessed
above ground was in a wood near the H