o
the grate. Gradually the fire sank, and the room darkened. A feeling of
delight and awe stole into his heart.

Jimbo loved these early hours of the night before sleep came. He felt no
fear of the dark; its mystery thrilled his soul; but he liked the
summer dark, with its soft, warm silences better than the chill winter
shadows. Presently the firelight sprang up into a brief flame and then
died away altogether with an odd little gulp. He knew the sound well; he
often watched the fire out, and now, as he lay in bed waiting for he
knew not what, the moonlight filtered in through the baize curtains and
gradually gave to the room a wholly new character.

Jimbo sat up in bed and listened. The house was very still. He slipped
into his red dressing-gown and crept noiselessly over to the window. For
a moment he paused by his brother's bed to make sure that he really was
asleep; then, evidently satisfied, he drew aside a corner of the curtain
and peered out.

"Oh!" he said, drawing in his breath with delight, and again "oh!"

It was difficult to understand why the sea of white moonlight that
covered the lawn should fill him with such joy, and at the same time
bring a lump into his throat. It made him feel as if he were swelling
out into something very much greater than the actual limits of his
little person. And the sensation was one of mingled pain and delight,
too intense for him to feel for very long. The unhappiness passed
gradually away, he always noticed, and the happiness merged after a
while into a sort of dreamy ecstasy in which he neither thought nor
wished much, but was conscious only of one single unmanageable yearning.

The huge cedars on the lawn reared themselves up like giants in silver
cloaks, and the horse-chestnut--the Umbrella Tree, as the children
called it--loomed with motionless branches that were frosted and
shining. Beyond it, in a blue mist of moonlight and distance, lay the
kitchen-garden; he could just make out the line of the high wall where
the fruit-trees grew. Immediately below him the gravel of the carriage
drive sparkled with frost.

The bars of the windows were cold to his hands, yet he stood there for a
long time with his nose flattened against the pane and his bare feet on
the cane chair. He felt both happy and sad; his heart longed dreadfully
for something he had not got, something that seemed out of his reach
because he could not name it. No one seemed to believe all the things he
_