and farther, and see what was on
the other side of the wall. I climbed up it very slowly, going sideways
all the time, and when I got to the top and looked over, I was in the
queerest country I had seen, stranger even than the hill of the grey
rocks. It looked as if earth-children had been playing there with their
spades, as it was all hills and hollows, and castles and walls made of
earth and covered with grass. There were two mounds like big beehives,
round and great and solemn, and then hollow basins, and then a steep
mounting wall like the ones I saw once by the seaside where the big guns
and the soldiers were. I nearly fell into one of the round hollows, it
went away from under my feet so suddenly, and I ran fast down the side
and stood at the bottom and looked up. It was strange and solemn to look
up. There was nothing but the grey, heavy sky and the sides of the
hollow; everything else had gone away, and the hollow was the whole
world, and I thought that at night it must be full of ghosts and moving
shadows and pale things when the moon shone down to the bottom at the
dead of the night, and the wind wailed up above. It was so strange and
solemn and lonely, like a hollow temple of dead heathen gods. It
reminded me of a tale my nurse had told me when I was quite little; it
was the same nurse that took me into the wood where I saw the beautiful
white people. And I remembered how nurse had told me the story one
winter night, when the wind was beating the trees against the wall, and
crying and moaning in the nursery chimney. She said there was, somewhere
or other, a hollow pit, just like the one I was standing in, everybody
was afraid to go into it or near it, it was such a bad place. But once
upon a time there was a poor girl who said she would go into the hollow
pit, and everybody tried to stop her, but she would go. And she went
down into the pit and came back laughing, and said there was nothing
there at all, except green grass and red stones, and white stones and
yellow flowers. And soon after people saw she had most beautiful emerald
earrings, and they asked how she got them, as she and her mother were
quite poor. But she laughed, and said her earrings were not made of
emeralds at all, but only of green grass. Then, one day, she wore on her
breast the reddest ruby that any one had ever seen, and it was as big as
a hen's egg, and glowed and sparkled like a hot burning coal of fire.
And they asked how she got it, a