rrying me on her shoulder; there was a field of yellow corn, and
we went through it, it was very hot. Then we came to a path through a
wood, and a tall man came after us, and went with us till we came to a
place where there was a deep pool, and it was very dark and shady. Nurse
put me down on the soft moss under a tree, and she said: 'She can't get
to the pond now.' So they left me there, and I sat quite still and
watched, and out of the water and out of the wood came two wonderful
white people, and they began to play and dance and sing. They were a
kind of creamy white like the old ivory figure in the drawing-room; one
was a beautiful lady with kind dark eyes, and a grave face, and long
black hair, and she smiled such a strange sad smile at the other, who
laughed and came to her. They played together, and danced round and
round the pool, and they sang a song till I fell asleep. Nurse woke me
up when she came back, and she was looking something like the lady had
looked, so I told her all about it, and asked her why she looked like
that. At first she cried, and then she looked very frightened, and
turned quite pale. She put me down on the grass and stared at me, and I
could see she was shaking all over. Then she said I had been dreaming,
but I knew I hadn't. Then she made me promise not to say a word about it
to anybody, and if I did I should be thrown into the black pit. I was
not frightened at all, though nurse was, and I never forgot about it,
because when I shut my eyes and it was quite quiet, and I was all alone,
I could see them again, very faint and far away, but very splendid; and
little bits of the song they sang came into my head, but I couldn't sing
it.

I was thirteen, nearly fourteen, when I had a very singular adventure,
so strange that the day on which it happened is always called the White
Day. My mother had been dead for more than a year, and in the morning I
had lessons, but they let me go out for walks in the afternoon. And this
afternoon I walked a new way, and a little brook led me into a new
country, but I tore my frock getting through some of the difficult
places, as the way was through many bushes, and beneath the low branches
of trees, and up thorny thickets on the hills, and by dark woods full of
creeping thorns. And it was a long, long way. It seemed as if I was
going on for ever and ever, and I had to creep by a place like a tunnel
where a brook must have been, but all the water had dried up, a