ght that the wall was three feet thick, and he
could walk upon it quite comfortably, and look down into a lovely
garden, where all the trees were in blossom, and creepers tossed their
long tendrils from tree to tree, covered with puffs of yellow, or
bells of white, or bunches and knots of blue or rosy bloom.

He could look down into the beautiful empty rooms of the castle, and
he walked cautiously on the wall till he came to the west front, and
reached a little casement window that had latticed panes. Jack peeped
in; nobody was there. He took his knife, and cut away a little bit of
lead to let out the pane, and it fell with such a crash on the
pavement below that he wondered it did not bring the deer over to look
at what he was about. Nobody came.

He put in his hand and opened the latchet, and with very little
trouble got down into the room. Still nobody was to be seen. He
thought that the room, years ago, might have been a fairies'
school-room, for it was strewn with books, slates, and all sorts of
copybooks. A fine soft dust had settled down over everything,--pens,
papers, and all. Jack opened a copybook: its pages were headed with
maxims, just as ours are, which proved that these fairies must have
been superior to such as he had hitherto come among. Jack read some of
them:--

Turn your back on the light, and you'll follow a shadow.
The deaf queen Fate has dumb courtiers.
If the hound is your foe, don't sleep in his kennel.
That that is, is.

And so on; but nobody came, and no sound was heard, so he opened the
door, and found himself in a long and most splendid gallery, all hung
with pictures, and spread with a most beautiful carpet, which was as
soft and white as a piece of wool, and wrought with a beautiful
device. This was the letter M, with a crown and sceptre, and
underneath a beautiful little boat, exactly like the one in which he
had come up the river. Jack felt sure that this carpet had been made
for Mopsa, and he went along the gallery upon it till he reached a
grand staircase of oak that was almost black with age, and he stole
gently down it, for he began to feel rather shy, more especially as he
could now see the great hall under the dome, and that it had a
beautiful lady in it, and many other people, but no deer at all.

These fairy people were something like the one-foot-one fairies, but
much larger and more like children; and they had very gentle, happy
faces, and seemed to be extremely g