eople have cut their names on it, and a
turret at one corner, and a low wall all round, up and down, like castle
battlements. And we looked down and saw the roof of the church, and the
leads, and the churchyard, and our garden, and the Moat House, and the
farm, and Mrs Simpkins's cottage, looking very small, and other farms
looking like toy things out of boxes, and we saw corn-fields and meadows
and pastures. A pasture is not the same thing as a meadow, whatever you
may think. And we saw the tops of trees and hedges, looking like the map
of the United States, and villages, and a tower that did not look very
far away standing by itself on the top of a hill. Alice pointed to it,
and said--

'What's that?'

'It's not a church,' said Noel, 'because there's no churchyard. Perhaps
it's a tower of mystery that covers the entrance to a subterranean vault
with treasure in it.'

Dicky said, 'Subterranean fiddlestick!' and 'A waterworks, more likely.'

Alice thought perhaps it was a ruined castle, and the rest of its
crumbling walls were concealed by ivy, the growth of years.

Oswald could not make his mind up what it was, so he said, 'Let's go and
see! We may as well go there as anywhere.'

So we got down out of the church tower and dusted ourselves, and set
out.

The Tower of Mystery showed quite plainly from the road, now that we
knew where to look for it, because it was on the top of a hill. We began
to walk. But the tower did not seem to get any nearer. And it was very
hot.

So we sat down in a meadow where there was a stream in the ditch and ate
the 'snack'. We drank the pure water from the brook out of our hands,
because there was no farm to get milk at just there, and it was too much
fag to look for one--and, besides, we thought we might as well save the
sixpence.

Then we started again, and still the tower looked as far off as ever.
Denny began to drag his feet, though he had brought a walking-stick
which none of the rest of us had, and said--

'I wish a cart would come along. We might get a lift.'

He knew all about getting lifts, of course, from having been in the
country before. He is not quite the white mouse we took him for at
first. Of course when you live in Lewisham or Blackheath you learn other
things. If you asked for a lift in Lewisham, High Street, your only
reply would be jeers. We sat down on a heap of stones, and decided that
we would ask for a lift from the next cart, whichever way it was goi