hours.' But he wasn't hungry. It may have been the magic, or it may have
been the odd breakfast he had had. I don't know. He spoke aloud because
it was so quiet in that strange open country with no one in it but
himself. And no sound but the clump, clump of his boots on the path. And
it seemed to him that everything grew quieter and quieter till he could
almost hear himself think. Loneliness, real loneliness is a dreadful
thing. I hope you will never feel it. Philip looked to right and left,
and before him, and on all the wide plain nothing moved. There were the
grass and flowers, but no wind stirred them. And there was no sign that
any living person had ever trodden that path--except that there _was_ a
path to tread, and that the path led to the Stonehenge building, and
even that seemed to be only a ruin.

'I'll go as far as that anyhow,' said Philip; 'perhaps there'll be a
signboard there or something.'

There was something. Something most unexpected. Philip reached the
building; it was really very like Stonehenge, only the pillars were
taller and closer together and there was one high solid towering wall;
turned the corner of a massive upright and ran almost into the arms, and
quite on to the feet of a man in a white apron and a square paper cap,
who sat on a fallen column, eating bread and cheese with a clasp-knife.

'I beg your pardon!' Philip gasped.

'Granted, I'm sure,' said the man; 'but it's a dangerous thing to do,
Master Philip, running sheer on to chaps' clasp-knives.'

He set Philip on his feet, and waved the knife, which had been so often
sharpened that the blade was half worn away.

'Set you down and get your breath,' he said kindly.

'Why, it's _you_!' said Philip.

'Course it is. Who should I be if I wasn't me? That's poetry.'

'But how did you get here?'

'Ah!' said the man going on with his bread and cheese, while he talked
quite in the friendliest way, 'that's telling.'

'Well, tell then,' said Philip impatiently. But he sat down.

'Well, you say it's me. Who be it? Give it a name.'

'You're old Perrin,' said Pip; 'I mean, of course, I beg your pardon,
you're Mr. Perrin, the carpenter.'

'And what does carpenters do?'

'Carp, I suppose,' said Philip. 'That means they make things, doesn't
it?'

'That's it,' said the man encouragingly; 'what sort of things now might
old Perrin have made for you?'

'You made my wheelbarrow, I know,' said Philip, 'and my bricks.'

'Ah!' said Mr. P