to be.'

'What was your purpose in coming?'

'I didn't do it on purpose--I just happened to come.'

The captain wrote that down too. And then he and Philip and the soldiers
looked at each other in silence.

'Well?' said the boy.

'Well?' said the captain.

'I do wish,' said the boy, 'you'd tell me what you meant by my really
happening after all. And then I wish you'd tell me the way home.'

'Where do you want to get to?' asked the captain.

'The _address_,' said Philip, 'is The Grange, Ravelsham, Sussex.'

'Don't know it,' said the captain briefly, 'and anyhow you can't go back
there now. Didn't you read the notice at the top of the ladder?
Trespassers will be prosecuted. You've got to be prosecuted before
you can go back anywhere.'

'I'd rather be persecuted than go down that ladder again,' he said.
'I suppose it won't be very bad--being persecuted, I mean?'

His idea of persecution was derived from books. He thought it
to be something vaguely unpleasant from which one escaped in
disguise--adventurous and always successful.

'That's for the judges to decide,' said the captain, 'it's a serious
thing trespassing in our city. This guard is put here expressly to
prevent it.'

'Do you have many trespassers?' Philip asked. The captain seemed kind,
and Philip had a great-uncle who was a judge, so the word judges made
him think of tips and good advice, rather than of justice and
punishment.

'Many trespassers indeed!' the captain almost snorted his answer.
'That's just it. There's never been one before. You're the first. For
years and years and years there's been a guard here, because when the
town was first built the astrologers foretold that some day there would
be a trespasser who would do untold mischief. So it's our
privilege--we're the Polistopolitan guards--to keep watch over the only
way by which a trespasser could come in.'

'May I sit down?' said Philip suddenly, and the soldiers made room for
him on the bench.

'My father and my grandfather and all my ancestors were in the guards,'
said the captain proudly. 'It's a very great honour.'

'I wonder,' said Philip, 'why you don't cut off the end of your
ladder--the top end I mean; then nobody could come up.'

'That would never do,' said the captain, 'because, you see, there's
another prophecy. The great deliverer is to come that way.'

'Couldn't I,' suggested Philip shyly, 'couldn't I be the deliverer
instead of the trespasser? I'd much rather, y