days if I live to be quite old, because all the time I
felt so strange, wondering and doubting, and feeling quite sure at one
time, and making up my mind, and then I would feel quite sure that such
things couldn't happen really, and it began all over again. But I took
great care not to do certain things that might be very dangerous. So I
waited and wondered for a long time, and though I was not sure at all, I
never dared to try to find out. But one day I became sure that all that
nurse said was quite true, and I was all alone when I found it out. I
trembled all over with joy and terror, and as fast as I could I ran into
one of the old brakes where we used to go--it was the one by the lane,
where nurse made the little clay man--and I ran into it, and I crept
into it; and when I came to the place where the elder was, I covered up
my face with my hands and lay down flat on the grass, and I stayed there
for two hours without moving, whispering to myself delicious, terrible
things, and saying some words over and over again. It was all true and
wonderful and splendid, and when I remembered the story I knew and
thought of what I had really seen, I got hot and I got cold, and the air
seemed full of scent, and flowers, and singing. And first I wanted to
make a little clay man, like the one nurse had made so long ago, and I
had to invent plans and stratagems, and to look about, and to think of
things beforehand, because nobody must dream of anything that I was
doing or going to do, and I was too old to carry clay about in a tin
bucket. At last I thought of a plan, and I brought the wet clay to the
brake, and did everything that nurse had done, only I made a much finer
image than the one she had made; and when it was finished I did
everything that I could imagine and much more than she did, because it
was the likeness of something far better. And a few days later, when I
had done my lessons early, I went for the second time by the way of the
little brook that had led me into a strange country. And I followed the
brook, and went through the bushes, and beneath the low branches of
trees, and up thorny thickets on the hill, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns, a long, long way. Then I crept through the dark tunnel
where the brook had been and the ground was stony, till at last I came
to the thicket that climbed up the hill, and though the leaves were
coming out upon the trees, everything looked almost as black as it was
on the f