tolen some rocks from an elder cousin's rockery and started a little
rockery of our own. The plants which we sowed in its interstices were
cared for so excessively that it was only because of their vegetable
nature that they managed to put up with it till their untimely death.
Words cannot recount the endless joy and wonder which this miniature
mountain-top held for us. We had no doubt that this creation of ours
would be a wonderful thing to our elders also. The day that we sought to
put this to the proof, however, the hillock in the corner of our room,
with all its rocks, and all its vegetation, vanished. The knowledge that
the schoolroom floor was not a proper foundation for the erection of a
mountain was imparted so rudely, and with such suddenness, that it gave
us a considerable shock. The weight of stone of which the floor was
relieved settled on our minds when we realised the gulf between our
fancies and the will of our elders.

How intimately did the life of the world throb for us in those days!
Earth, water, foliage and sky, they all spoke to us and would not be
disregarded. How often were we struck by the poignant regret that we
could only see the upper storey of the earth and knew nothing of its
inner storey. All our planning was as to how we could pry beneath its
dust-coloured cover. If, thought we, we could drive in bamboo after
bamboo, one over the other, we might perhaps get into some sort of touch
with its inmost depths.

During the _Magh_ festival a series of wooden pillars used to be planted
round the outer courtyard for supporting the chandeliers. Digging holes
for these would begin on the first of _Magh_. The preparations for
festivity are ever interesting to young folk. But this digging had a
special attraction for me. Though I had watched it done year after
year--and seen the hole grow bigger and bigger till the digger had
completely disappeared inside, and yet nothing extraordinary, nothing
worthy of the quest of prince or knight, had ever appeared--yet every
time I had the feeling that the lid being lifted off a chest of mystery.
I felt that a little bit more digging would do it. Year after year
passed, but that bit never got done. There was a pull at the curtain but
it was not drawn. The elders, thought I, can do whatever they please,
why do they rest content with such shallow delving? If we young folk had
the ordering of it, the inmost mystery of the earth would no longer be
allowed to remain s