and I answered him that in the fields we know cats kept their
place and did not speak to man. And then I came downstairs and walked
straight out of the door, heading for Go-by Street. "You are going
the wrong way," the witch called through the window; and indeed I had
sooner gone back to the ivory palace again, but I had no right to
trespass any further on the hospitality of Singanee and one cannot
stay always in the Lands of Dream, and what knowledge had that old
witch of the call of the fields we know or the little though many
snares that bind our feet therein? So I paid no heed to her, but kept
on, and came to Go-by Street. I saw the house with the green door
some way up the street but thinking that the near end of the street
was closer to the Embankment where I had left my boat I tried the
first door I came to, a cottage thatched like the rest, with little
golden spires along the roof-ridge, and strange birds sitting there
and preening marvellous feathers. The door opened, and to my surprise
I found myself in what seemed like a shepherd's cottage; a man who was
sitting on a log of wood in a little low dark room said something to
me in an alien language. I muttered something and hurried through to
the street. The house was thatched in front as well as behind. There
were not golden spires in front, no marvellous birds; but there was no
pavement. There was a row of houses, byres, and barns but no other
sign of a town. Far off I saw one or two little villages. Yet there
was the river--and no doubt the Thames, for it was the width of the
Thames and had the curves of it, if you can imagine the Thames in that
particular spot without a city around it, without any bridges, and the
Embankment fallen in. I saw that there had happened to me permanently
and in the light of day some such thing as happens to a man, but to a
child more often, when he awakes before morning in some strange room
and sees a high, grey window where the door ought to be and unfamiliar
objects in wrong places and though knowing where he is yet knows not
how it can be that the place should look like that.

A flock of sheep came by me presently looking the same as ever, but
the man who led them had a wild, strange look. I spoke to him and he
did not understand me. Then I went down to the river to see if my
boat was there and at the very spot where I had left it, in the mud
(for the tide was low) I saw a half-buried piece of blackened wood
that