left them, and when he had crossed
the plateau and still went on, all five of them cantered after to the
edge of their green land; for above the high green plateau of the
centaurs is nothing but naked mountains, and the last green thing that
is seen by the mountaineer as he travels to Tong Tong Tarrup is the
grass that the centaurs trample. He came into the snow fields that the
mountain wears like a cape, its head being bare above it, and still
climbed on. The centaurs watched him with increasing wonder.

Not even fabulous beasts were near him now, nor strange demoniac
trees--nothing but snow and the clean bare crag above it on which was
Tong Tong Tarrup. All day he climbed and evening found him above the
snow-line; and soon he came to the stairway cut in the rock and in
sight of that grizzled man, the long porter of Tong Tong Tarrup,
sitting mumbling amazing memories to himself and expecting in vain
from the stranger a gift of bash.

It seems that as soon as the stranger arrived at the bastion gateway,
tired though he was, he demanded lodgings at once that commanded a
good view of the Edge of the World. But the long porter, that grizzled
man, disappointed of his bash, demanded the stranger's story to add to
his memories before he would show him the way. And this is the story,
if the long porter has told me the truth and if his memory is still
what it was. And when the story was told, the grizzled man arose, and,
dangling his musical keys, went up through door after door and by many
stairs and led the stranger to the top-most house, the highest roof in
the world, and in its parlour showed him the parlour window. There the
tired stranger sat down in a chair and gazed out of the window sheer
over the Edge of the World. The window was shut, and in its glittering
panes the twilight of the World's Edge blazed and danced, partly like
glow-worms' lamps and partly like the sea; it went by rippling, full
of wonderful moons. But the traveller did not look at the wonderful
moons. For from the abyss there grew with their roots in far
constellations a row of hollyhocks, and amongst them a small green
garden quivered and trembled as scenes tremble in water; higher up,
ling in bloom was floating upon the twilight, more and more floated up
till all the twilight was purple; the little green garden low down was
hung in the midst of it. And the garden down below, and the ling all
round it, seemed all to be trembling and drifting on a son