and is pretty well shaded over; the sun hits it in places and
makes flecks of light through the leaves.

The day I am thinking of was a very hot one in early September. I had
come across the meadows with some idea of sitting by the stream and
reading. The only change in my plans that I made was that instead of
sitting down I lay down, and instead of reading I went to sleep.

You know how sometimes--but very, very seldom--you see something in a
dream which you are quite sure is real. So it was with me this time. I
did not dream any story or see any people; I only dreamt of a plant. In
the dream no one told me anything about it: I just saw it growing under
a tree: a small bit of the tree root came into the picture, an old
gnarled root covered with moss, and with three sorts of eyes in it,
round holes trimmed with moss--you know the kind. The plant was not one
I should have thought much about, though certainly it was not one that I
knew: it had no flowers or berries, and grew quite squat in the ground;
more like a yellow aconite without the flower than anything else. It
seemed to consist of a ring of six leaves spread out pretty flat with
nine points on each leaf. As I say, I saw this quite clearly, and
remembered it because six times nine makes fifty-four, which happens to
be a number which I had a particular reason for remembering at that
moment.

Well, there was no more in the dream than that: but, such as it was, it
fixed itself in my mind like a photograph, and I was sure that if ever I
saw that tree root and that plant, I should know them again. And, though
I neither saw nor heard anything more of them than I have told you, it
was borne in upon my mind that the plant _was_ worth finding.

When I woke up I still lay, feeling very lazy, on the grass with my head
within a foot or two of the edge of the stream and listened to its
noise, until in five or six minutes--whether I began to doze off again
or not does not much matter--the water-sound became like words, and
said, "_Trickle-up, trickle-up_," an immense number of times. It pleased
me, for though in poetry we hear a deal about babbling brooks, and
though I am particularly fond of the noise they make, I never was able
before to pretend that I could hear any words. And when I did finally
get up and shake myself awake I thought I would anyhow pay so much
attention to what the water said as to stroll up the stream instead of
down. So I did: it took me through the f