ast."

"It's all in the past," said Mr. Russell. "It's all a dream, and an echo,
and the ghost of the day before yesterday."

"How do you know?" asked Jay. "How can you tell it's not 1916 that's
the ghost?"

She had been taught by her Friend to take very few things for granted,
and time least of all.

"I asked you to tell me no facts," she added.

"I'll only tell you two," persisted Mr. Russell. "One is that they have
in the church near the quarry a dark wooden figure of a saint, with the
raised arm broken, and straight draperies. I saw it, and they told me
what I knew already, that it came out of the hall of a house that was
drowned in the sea. The other fact is a story that the tobacconist told
me, about a wriggly ladder, and stone balls, and the Law. In the
tobacconist's childhood they found the stone balls at the foot of the
cliff in the sand. That story, too, I knew already. Quite apart from
your letters, you little secret friend, I knew the face of that sea
directly I saw it."

"But how did you know? How dared you know?"

"Oh well," said Mr. Russell, "you asked me to tell you no facts."

Mr. Russell was not observant. He was not sufficiently alive to be
observant. He was much occupied in remembering phantom yesterdays, and I
do not think he listened very much to what the 'bus-conductor said. He
only enjoyed the sound of her voice, which he remembered. So he did not
know that she was unhappy.

They came presently to a separate part of the forest, which is impaled
upon a straight white road. The earth beneath the trees was caught in a
mesh of shadows. The trees are high and vaulted there, but the forest is
very reticent. The detail of its making is so small that you can only
see it if you lie down on your face. Do this and you can see the green
threads of the earth's material woven across the skeletons of last year's
leaves. You can see the little lawns of moss and weeds, too small to
name, that make the way brilliant for the ants. You can watch the heroic
armoured beetles defying their world. You can cover with a leaf the great
open-air public meeting-places of six-legged things. You can see the
spiders at work on their silver cranes, you can watch the bold elevated
activities of the caterpillars. You can feel the scattered grasses stroke
your eyelids, you can hear the low songs of fairies among the roots of
the trees. All these things you may enjoy if you lie down, but the forest
does not show them to y