.

"Who knows when they began?"

"They do everything that we do," said Luclarion, her imagination
kindling, but as under protest. "If we could jump in perhaps they
would jump out."

"We might jump _at_ 'em," said Marcus. "Jest get 'em going, and
may-be they'd jump over. Le's try."

So they set up two chairs from Lake Ontario in the kitchen doorway,
to jump from; but they could only jump to the middle round of the
carpet, and who could expect that the shadow children should be
beguiled by that into a leap over bounds? They only came to the
middle round of _their_ carpet.

"We must go nearer; we must set the chairs in the middle, and jump
close. Jest _shave_, you know," said Marcus.

"O, I'm afraid," said Luclarion.

"I'll tell you what! Le's _run_ and jump! Clear from the other side
of the kitchen, you know. Then they'll have to run too, and may-be
they can't stop."

So they picked up chairs and made a path, and ran from across the
broad kitchen into the parlor doorway, quite on to the middle round
of the carpet, and then with great leaps came down bodily upon the
floor close in front of the large glass that, leaned over them, with
two little fallen figures in it, rolling aside quickly also, over
the slanting red carpet.

But, O dear what did it?

Had the time come, anyhow, for the old string to part its last
fibre, that held the mirror tilting from the wall,--or was it the
crash of a completed spell?

There came a snap,--a strain,--as some nails or screws that held it
otherwise gave way before the forward pressing weight, and down,
flat-face upon the floor, between the children, covering them with
fragments of splintered glass and gilded wood,--eagle, ball-chains,
and all,--that whole magnificence and mystery lay prostrate.

Behind, where it had been, was a blank, brown-stained cobwebbed
wall, thrown up harsh and sudden against them, making the room
small, and all the enchanted chamber, with its red slanting carpet,
and its far reflected corners, gone.

The house hushed up again after that terrible noise, and stood just
the same as ever. When a thing like that happens, it tells its own
story, just once, and then it is over. _People_ are different. They
keep talking.

There was Grashy to come home. She had not got there in time to hear
the house tell it. She must learn it from the children. Why?

"Because they knew," Luclarion said. "Because, then, they could not
wait and let it be found out."

"W