ot many knew it, for where
the form of business is blackmail the fewer creditors you have the
better (which of course in various degrees applies at all times).

On the shores of the risky seas of Shiroora Shan grows one tree only
so that upon its branches if anywhere in the world there must build
its nest the Bird of the Difficult Eye. Neepy Thang had come by this
information, which was indeed the truth, that if the bird migrated to
Fairyland before the three eggs hatched out they would undoubtedly all
turn into emeralds, while if they hatched out first it would be a bad
business.

When he had mentioned these eggs to Messrs. Grosvenor and Campbell
they had said, "The very thing": they were men of few words, in
English, for it was not their native tongue.

So Neepy Thang set out. He bought the purple ticket at Victoria
Station. He went by Herne Hill, Bromley and Bickley and passed St.
Mary Cray. At Eynsford he changed and taking a footpath along a
winding valley went wandering into the hills. And at the top of a hill
in a little wood, where all the anemones long since were over and the
perfume of mint and thyme from outside came drifting in with Thang, he
found once more the familiar path, age-old and fair as wonder, that
leads to the Edge of the World. Little to him were its sacred memories
that are one with the secret of earth, for he was on business, and
little would they be to me if I ever put them on paper. Let it suffice
that he went down that path going further and further from the fields
we know, and all the way he muttered to himself, "What if the eggs
hatch out and it be a bad business!" The glamour that is at all times
upon those lonely lands that lie at the back of the chalky hills of
Kent intensified as he went upon his journeys. Queerer and queerer
grew the things that he saw by little World-End Path. Many a twilight
descended upon that journey with all their mysteries, many a blaze of
stars; many a morning came flaming up to a tinkle of silvern horns;
till the outpost elves of Fairyland came in sight and the glittering
crests of Fairyland's three mountains betokened the journey's end. And
so with painful steps (for the shores of the world are covered with
huge crystals) he came to the risky seas of Shiroora Shan and saw them
pounding to gravel the wreckage of fallen stars, saw them and heard
their roar, those shipless seas that between earth and the fairies'
homes heave beneath some huge wind that is no