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 going.
It was while we were waiting that Oswald found out about plantain seeds
being good to eat.

When the sound of wheels came we remarked with joy that the cart was
going towards the Tower of Mystery. It was a cart a man was going to
fetch a pig home in. Denny said:

"I say, you might give us a lift. Will you?"

The man who was going for the pig said:

"What, all that little lot?" but he winked at Alice, and we saw that he
meant to aid us on our way. So we climbed up, and he whipped up the
horse and asked us where we were going. He was a kindly old man, with a
face like a walnut shell, and white hair and beard like a
jack-in-the-box.

"We want to get to the tower," Alice said. "Is it a ruin, or not?"

"It ain't no ruin," the man said; "no fear of that! The man wot built it
he left so much a year to be spent on repairing of it! Money that might
have put bread in honest folks' mouths."

We asked was it a church then, or not.

"Church?" he said. "Not it. It's more of a tombstone, from all I can
make out. They do say there was a curse on him that built it, and he
wasn't to rest in earth or sea. So he's buried half-way up the tower--if
you can call it buried."

"Can you go up it?" Oswald asked.

"Lord love you! yes; a fine view from the top, they say. I've never been
up myself, though I've lived in sight of it, boy and man, these
sixty-three years come harvest."

Alice asked whether you had to go past the dead and buried person to get
to the top of the tower, and could you see the coffin.

"No, no," the man said; "that's all hid away behind a slab of stone,
that is, with reading on it. You've no call to be afraid, missy. It's
daylight all the way up. But I wouldn't go there after dark, so I
wouldn't. It's always open, day and night, and they say tramps sleep
there now and again. Any one who likes can sleep there, but it wouldn't
be me."

We thought that it would not be us either, but we wanted to go more than
ever, especially when the man said:

"My own great-uncle of the mother's side, he was on