ters like Venetian blinds, but they
won't pull up. There were heaps of straws and sticks on the window
ledges. We think they were owls' nests, but we did not see any owls.

Then the tower stairs got very narrow and dark, and we went on up, and
we came to a door and opened it suddenly, and it was like being hit in
the face, the light was so sudden. And there we were on the top of the
tower, which is flat, and people have cut their names on it, and a
turret at one corner, and a low wall all round, up and down, like castle
battlements. And we looked down and saw the roof of the church, and the
leads, and the church-yard, and our garden, and the Moat House, and the
farm, and Mrs. Simpkins's cottage, looking very small, and other farms
looking like toy things out of boxes, and we saw cornfields and meadows
and pastures. A pasture is not the same thing as a meadow, whatever you
may think. And we saw the tops of trees and hedges, looking like the map
of the United States, and villages, and a tower that did not look very
far away standing by itself on the top of a hill.

Alice pointed to it, and said:

"What's that?"

"It's not a church," said Noel, "because there's no church-yard. Perhaps
it's a tower of mystery that covers the entrance to a subterranean vault
with treasure in it."

Dicky said, "Subterranean fiddlestick!" and "A water-works, more
likely."

Alice thought perhaps it was a ruined castle, and the rest of its
crumbling walls were concealed by ivy, the growth of years.

Oswald could not make his mind up what it was, so he said: "Let's go and
see! We may as well go there as anywhere."

So we got down out of the church tower and dusted ourselves, and set
out.

The Tower of Mystery showed quite plainly from the road, now that we
knew where to look for it, because it was on the top of a hill. We began
to walk. But the tower did not seem to get any nearer. And it was very
hot.

So we sat down in a meadow where there was a stream in the ditch and ate
the "snack." We drank the pure water from the brook out of our hands,
because there was no farm to get milk at just there, and it was too much
fag to look for one--and, besides, we thought we might as well save the
sixpence.

Then we started again, and still the tower looked as far off as ever.
Denny began to drag his feet, though he had brought a walking-stick
which none of the rest of us had, and said:

"I wish a cart would come along. We might get a lift."