just a little wooden figure again.

Philip dropped the ear-trumpet and looked at Mr. Noah.

'I _don't_ understand,' he said. But this at least he understood. That
Helen would come back when she got that telegram, and that before she
came he must go into the other world and find the lost Lucy.

'But oh,' he said, 'suppose I _don't_ find her. I wish I hadn't built
those cities so big! And time will go on. And, perhaps, when Helen comes
back she'll find _me_ lost _too_--as well as Lucy.'

But he dried his eyes and told himself that this was not how heroes
behaved. He must build again. Whichever way you looked at it there was
no time to be lost. And besides the nurse might occur at any moment.

He looked round for building materials. There was the chess-table. It
had long narrow legs set round it, rather like arches. Something might
be done with it, with books and candlesticks and Japanese vases.

Something _was_ done. Philip built with earnest care, but also with
considerable speed. If the nurse should come in before he had made a
door and got through it--come in and find him building again--she was
quite capable of putting him to bed, where, of course, building is
impossible. In a very little time there was a building. But how to get
in. He was, alas, the wrong size. He stood helpless, and once more tears
pricked and swelled behind his eyelids. One tear fell on his hand.

'Tears are a strong magic,' Mr. Noah had said. And at the thought the
tears stopped. Still there _was_ a tear, the one on his hand. He rubbed
it on the pillar of the porch.

And instantly a queer tight thin feeling swept through him. He felt
giddy and shut his eyes. His boots, ever sympathetic, shuffled on the
carpet. Or was it the carpet? It was very thick and---- He opened his
eyes. His feet were once more on the long grass of the illimitable
prairie. And in front of him towered the gigantic porch of a vast
building and a domino path leading up to it.

'Oh, I am so glad,' cried Philip among the grass. 'I couldn't have borne
it if she'd been lost for ever, and all my fault.'

The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him. What would he find on
the other side of it?

[Illustration: The gigantic porch lowered frowningly above him.]

'I don't care. I've simply got to go,' he said, and stepped out bravely.
'If I can't _be_ a hero I'll try to behave like one.'

And with that he stepped out, stumbling a little in the thick grass, and
the dark