ddle was a fountain whose waters, silver in the moonlight, rose and
fell with gentle plashing sound. A tall tree, close to the archway, cast
the shadow of its trunk across the path--a broad black bar. He listened,
listened, listened, but there was nothing to listen to, except the deep
night silence and the changing soft sound the fountain made.

His eyes, growing accustomed to the dimness, showed him that he was
under a heavy domed roof supported on large square pillars--to the right
and left stood dark doors, shut fast.

'I will explore these doors by daylight,' he said. He did not feel
exactly frightened. But he did not feel exactly brave either. But he
wished and intended to be brave, so he said, 'I will explore these
doors. At least I think I will,' he added, for one must not only be
brave but truthful.

And then suddenly he felt very sleepy. He leaned against the wall, and
presently it seemed that sitting down would be less trouble, and then
that lying down would be more truly comfortable. A bell from very very
far away sounded the hour, twelve. Philip counted up to nine, but he
missed the tenth bell-beat, and the eleventh and the twelfth as well,
because he was fast asleep cuddled up warmly in the thick quilted
dressing-gown that Helen had made him last winter. He dreamed that
everything was as it used to be before That Man came and changed
everything and took Helen away. He was in his own little bed in his own
little room in their own little house, and Helen had come to call him.
He could see the sunlight through his closed eyelids--he was keeping
them closed just for the fun of hearing her try to wake him, and
presently he would tell her he had been awake all the time, and they
would laugh together about it. And then he awoke, and he was not in his
soft bed at home but on the hard floor of a big, strange gate-house, and
it was not Helen who was shaking him and saying, 'Here--I say, wake up,
can't you,' but a tall man in a red coat; and the light that dazzled his
eyes was not from the sun at all, but from a horn lantern which the man
was holding close to his face.

'What's the matter?' said Philip sleepily.

'That's the question,' said the man in red. 'Come along to the
guard-room and give an account of yourself, you young shaver.'

He took Philip's ear gently but firmly between a very hard finger and
thumb.

'Leave go,' said Philip, 'I'm not going to run away.' And he stood up
feeling very brave.

The