different, or in a kind of vision or dream. And I think Mr. Nahum had chosen such poems in Volume I. as carried away the imagination like that; either into the past, or into another mind, or into the all-but-forgotten; at times as if into another world. And this kind has been my choice in this book.

Not that his picture to a particular poem was always the picture I should have made of it. Take for example another nursery jingle in his book:

"How many miles to Babylon?"

"Three score and ten."

"Can I get there by candle-light?"
"Ay, and back again."

Mr. Nahum's corresponding picture was not of Babylon or of a candle, or of a traveller at all, but of a stone tomb. On its thick upper slab he had drawn-in an old earthen lamp, with a serpent for handle-its wick alight, and shining up on a small owl perched in the lower branches of the thick tree above.

That is one of the pleasures of reading-you may make any picture out of the words you can and will; and a poem may have as many different meanings as there are different minds.

There I would sit, then, and Mr. Nahum's book made of "one little room an everywhere." And though I was naturally rather stupid and dense, I did in time realize that "rare poems ask rare friends," and that even the simplest ones may have secrets which will need a pretty close searching out.

Of course I could not copy out all of the poems even in THEEOTHAWORLDIE, Volume I., and I took very few from Volumes II. and III. I chose what I liked best -those that, when I read them, never failed to carry me away, as if on a Magic Carpet, or in Seven League

:

Boots, into a region of their own. When the nightingale sings, other birds, it is said, will sit and listen to him and I remember very well hearing a nightingale so singing on a spray in a dewy hedge, and there were many small birds perched mute and quiet near. The cock crows at midnight; and for miles around his kinsmen answer. The fowler whistles his decoy for the wild duck to come. So certain rhymes and poems affected my mind when I was young, and continue to do so now that I am old.

To these (and the few bits of prose) which I chose from Mr. Nahum, I added others afterwards, and they are in this book too. All of them are in English; a few from over the ocean: but how very few they all are by comparison with the multitudes even of their own kind. And there are the whole world's languages besides! Even of my own favourites not all have found a place. There was not room enough. I have left out others also that may be found easily elsewhere. I am afraid, too, there may be many mistakes in my copying, though I have tried to be careful.

Miss Taroone knew that I was making use of Mr. Nahum's book; though she never questioned me about it. I came and went in her house at last like a rabbit in a warren, a mouse in a mousery. The hours I spent in those far-gone days in Mr. Nahum's round room! At times I wearied of it, and hated his books, and even wished I had never so much as set eyes on Thrae at all.

But after such sour moments, a gossip and an apple with Linnet Sara in her kitchen, or a scamper home, or a bathe under the hazels in the stream whose source, I believe, is in the hills beyond East Dene, would set me to rights again. For sheer joy of return I could scarcely breathe for a while after remounting the stone staircase, re-entering Mr. Nahum's room, and closing the door behind me.

From above his broad scrawled pages I would lift my eyes to his windows and stare as if out of one dream into another. How strange from across the sky was the gentle scented breeze blowing in on my cheek, softly stirring the dried kingfisher skin that hung from its beam; how near understanding then the tongues of the wild birds; how close the painted scene-as though I were but a picture too, and this my frame.

But there came a day that was to remove me out of the neighbourhood of Miss Taroone's Thrae into a dif ferent kind of living altogether. I was to be sent to school. After a hot debate with myself, and why I scarcely know, I asked my father's permission to spend the night at Miss Taroone's. He gave me a steady look and said, Yes.

I found Miss Taroone seated on the steps of her porch, and now that I look back at her then, she curiously reminds me—though she was ages older― of a picture you will find in the second stanza of poem No. 233 in this book. Standing before her-it was already getting towards dark-I said I was come to bid her goodbye; and might I spend the night in Mr. Nahum's round room. She raised her eyes on me, luminous and mysterious as the sky itself, even though in the dusk.

"You may say goodbye, Simon," she replied; “but unless I myself am much mistaken in you, your feet will not carry you out of all thought of me; and some day they will return to me whether you will or not."

Inside I was already in a flutter at thought of the hours to come, and I was accustomed to her strange speeches, though this struck on my mind more coldly than usual. I made a little jerk forwards; "I must thank you, please Miss Taroone, for having been so kind to me," I gulped in an awkward voice. "And I hope," I added, as she made no answer, "I hope I haven't been much of a bother -coming like this, I mean?”

"None, Simon"; was her sole reply. The hand that I had begun to hold out, went back into my pocket, and feeling extremely uncomfortable I half turned away.

"Why, who knows?" said the solemn voice, "Mr. Nahum may at this very moment be riding home. Have a candle alight."

"Thank you, Miss Taroone. Thank you very much indeed."

With that I turned about and hastened across the darkening garden into the house. My candle stick and matches stood ready on the old oak bench at the foot of the tower. I lit up, and began to climb the cold steps. My heart in my mouth, I hesitated at the hob-nailed door; but managed at last to turn the key in the lock.

With two taller candles kindled, and its curtains. drawn over the western window, I at once began to copy out the few last things I wanted for mine in Volume I. But there were two minds in me as midnight drew on, almost two selves, the one busy with pen and ink, the other stealthily listening to every faintest sound in my eyrie, a swift glance now and then up at the darkened glass only setting me more sharply to work. I had never before sat in so enormous a silence; the scratching of my pen its only tongue.

Steadily burned my candles; no sound of hoofs, no owl-cry, no knocking disturbed my peace; the nightingales had long since journeyed South. What I had hoped for, expected, dreaded in this long vigil, I cannot recall; all that I remember of it is that I began to shiver a little at last, partly because my young nerves were on the stretch, and partly because the small hours grew chill. In the very middle of the night there came to my ear what seemed a distant talking or gabbling. It It may have been fancy; it may have been Linnet Sara. What certainly was fancy is the notion that, as I started up out of an instant's drowse, a stooping shape had swiftly with

drawn itself from me. But this was merely the shadow of a dream.

I returned at last from the heavy sleep I had fallen into, my forehead resting on the backs of my hands, and they flat on the huge open volume, my whole body stiff with cold, and the first clear grey of daybreak in the East. And suddenly as my awakened eyes stared dully about them in that thin light-the old windows, the strange outlandish objects, the clustering pictures, the countless books, my own ugly writing on my paper-an indescribable despair and anxiety-almost terror even-seized upon me at the rushing thought of my own ignorance; of how little I knew, of how unimportant I was. And, again and again, my ignorance. Then I thought of Miss Taroone, of Mr. Nahum, of the life before me, and

everything yet to do. And a sullen misery swept up in

me at these reflections. And once more I wished from the bottom of my heart that I had never come to this house.

And with it, con

But gradually the light broadened. fidence began to return. The things around me that had seemed strange and hostile became familiar again. I stood up and stretched myself and, I think, muttered a prayer.

To this day I see the marvellous countryside of that morning with its hills and low thick mists and woodlands stretched like a painted scene beneath the windows—and that finger of light from the risen Sun presently piercing across the dark air, and as if by a miracle causing birds and water to awake and sing and shine.

With a kind of grief that was yet rapture in my mind, I stood looking out over the cold lichen-crusted shingled roof of Thrae- towards the East and towards those far horizons. Yet again the apprehension (that was almost a hope) drew over me that at any moment wall and chimney-shaft might thin softly away, and the Transformation