old, and though ineligible for military service, made a point of wearing
khaki about his face, and in a symmetrical heart-shaped spot near his
tail. To Sarah Brown he was the Question and the Answer, his presence
was a constant playtime for her mind; so well was he loved that he
seemed to her to move in a little mist and clamour of love. With every
one else she held but lame intercourse, but her Dog David and she
withheld no passing thought from each other. They could often be heard
by unmattering landladies and passers-by exchanging views in the strong
Suffolk accent that was a sort of standing joke between them. I believe
that Sarah Brown had loved the Dog David so much that she had given him
a soul. Certainly other dogs did not care for him. David said that they
had found out that his second name was Blessing, and that they laughed
at him for it. His face was seamed with the scars of their laughing. But
I know that the enmity had a more fundamental reason than that. I know
that when men speak with the tongues of angels they are shunned and
hated by men, and so I think that when dogs approach humanity too nearly
they are banished from the love of their own kind.

Sarah Brown was not altogether unfamiliar with the Parish of Faery, but
she never failed to be surprised by the enchantment of the Enchanted
Forest. The Green Ride runs straight through it, so incredibly straight
that as you walk along it the end of it is at the end of your sight, and
is like a star in a green sky. There is a dream that binds your mind as
you cross the forest; it is like an imitation of eternity, so that, as
you pass into the forest's shade, time passes from before you, and, as
you pass out of it, you seem to have lived a thousand quiet and utterly
forgotten lives. Clocks and calendars have no meaning in the forest; the
seasons and the hours haunt it at their will, and abide by no law. Just
as the sun upon a stormy day makes golden a moving and elusive acre in
our human woods, so the night in the Enchanted Forest comes and goes
like a ghost upon the sight of lovers of the night. For there you may
step, unastonished, from the end of a day into its beginning; there the
summer and the winter may dodge each other round one tree; there you may
see at one glance a spring hoar frost and an autumn trembling of airs, a
wild cherry tree blossoming beside a tawny maple. The forest is so deep
and so thick that it provides its own sky, and can enjoy its ow