road that passed through the orchards, till I came to a little hill,
with the moon showing above it glowing like a great rose. Then I saw
figures pass between me and the moon, one by one, in a long line, each
bent double, with great packs upon their shoulders. One of them was
singing, and then in the middle of the song I heard a horrible shrill
laugh, in the thin cracked voice of a very old woman, and they
disappeared into the shadow of the trees. I suppose they were people
going to work, or coming from work in the gardens; but how like it was
to a nightmare!

'I can't tell you about Hampton; I should never finish talking. I was
there one evening, not long before they closed the gates, and there were
very few people about. But the grey-red, silent, echoing courts, and the
flowers falling into dreamland as the night came on, and the dark yews
and shadowy-looking statues, and the far, still stretches of water
beneath the avenues; and all melting into a blue mist, all being hidden
from one's eyes, slowly, surely, as if veils were dropped, one by one,
on a great ceremony! Oh! my dear, what could it mean? Far away, across
the river, I heard a soft bell ring three times, and three times, and
again three times, and I turned away, and my eyes were full of tears.

'I didn't know what it was when I came to it; I only found out
afterwards that it must have been Hampton Court. One of the men in the
office told me he had taken an A. B. C. girl there, and they had great
fun. They got into the maze and couldn't get out again, and then they
went on the river and were nearly drowned. He told me there were some
spicy pictures in the galleries; his girl shrieked with laughter, so he
said.'

Mary quite disregarded this interlude.

'But you told me you had made a map. What was it like?'

'I'll show it you some day, if you want to see it. I marked down all the
places I had gone to, and made signs--things like queer letters--to
remind me of what I had seen. Nobody but myself could understand it. I
wanted to draw pictures, but I never learnt how to draw, so when I tried
nothing was like what I wanted it to be. I tried to draw a picture of
that town on the hill that I came to on the evening of the first day; I
wanted to make a steep hill with houses on top, and in the middle, but
high above them, the great church, all spires and pinnacles, and above
it, in the air, a cup with rays coming from it. But it wasn't a success.
I made a very stra