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The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing standing in the way.

—W. B.

Thus, gradually, the grey house under the hills changed into a palace; the garden stretched to I include the stars; and Paul, the retired Wood Cruiser, walked in a world all new and brilliant. For to find the means of self-expression is to build the foundations of spiritual health, and an ideal companionship, unvexed by limitations of sense, holds potentialities that can change earth into heaven. His accumulated stores of imagination found wings, and he wrote a series of Aventures that delighted his audience while they healed his own soul.

'I wish they'd go on for ever and ever,' observed Toby solemnly to her brother. 'Perhaps they do really, only.'

'Of course they do,' Jonah said decisively, 'but Uncle Paul only tells bits of them to us—bits that you can understand.'

Toby was too much in earnest to notice the masculine scorn. 'He does know a lot, doesn't he?' she said.

'Do you think he sees up into heaven? They're not a bit like made-up aventures.' She paused, deeply puzzled; very grave indeed.

'He's a man, of course,' replied Jonah. 'Men know big things like that.'

'The Aventures are true,' Nixie put in gently.

'That's why they're so big, and go on for ever and ever.'

'It's jolly when he puts us in them too, isn't it?' said Jonah, forgetting the masculine pose in his interest. 'He puts me in most,' the boy added proudly.

'But I do the funniest things,' declared Toby, slightly aggrieved. 'It was me that rode on the moose over the tree-tops to the North Pole, and understood all it said '

'That's nothing,' cried her brother, making a huge blot across his copy-book. 'He had to get me to turn on the roarer boryalis.'

'Nixie's always leader, anyhow,' replied the child, losing herself for a moment in the delight of that tremendous blot. She often borrowed Nixie in this way to obliterate Jonah when her own strength was insufficient.

'Of course she is,' was the manly verdict. 'She knows all those things almost as well as Uncle Paul. Don't you, Nixie?'

But Nixie was too busy cleaning up his blot with bits of torn blotting-paper to reply, and the arrival of Mile. Fleury put an end to the discussion for the moment.

And Paul himself, as the big child leading the littler children, or following their guidance when such guidance was clear, accepted his new duties with a happy heart. His friendship with them all grew delightfully, but especially, of course, his friendship with Nixie. This elemental child slipped into his life everywhere, into his play, as into his work; she assumed the right to look after him; with charming gravity she positively mothered him; and Paul, whose life hitherto had known little enough of such sympathy and care, simply loved it.

If her native poesy won his imagination, her practical interest in his welfare and comfort equally won his heart. The way she ferreted about in his room and study, so serious, so thoughtful, attending to so many little details that no one else ever thought of,—all this came into his life with a seductive charm as of something entirely new and strange to him. It was Nixie who always saw to it that his ink-pot was full and his quill pens trimmed; that flowers had no time to fade upon his table; and that matches for his pipes never failed in the glass match-stands. He used up matches, it seemed, almost by the handful.

'You're far worse than Daddy used to be,' she reproved him. 'I believe you eat them.' And when he assured her that he did nothing of the sort, she only shook her head darkly, and said she couldn't understand then what he did with them all.

A hundred services of love and kindness she did for him that no one else would have thought of. On his mantelpiece she put mysterious little bottles of medicine.

'For nettle-stings and scratches,' she explained. 'Your poor hands are always covered with them both when you've been out with us. 'And it was she, too, who bound up his fingers when wounds were more serious, and saw to it that he had a clean rag each day till the sore was healed. She put the new red riband on his straw hat after it fell (himself with it) into the Gull Pond; and one service especially that earned her his eternal respect was to fasten his evening black tie for dinner. This she did every night for him. Such tasks were for magical fingers only. He had never yet compassed it himself. He would run to the nursery to say good-night, and Nixie, looking almost unreal and changeling in her white nightgown, with her yellow hair top-knotted quaintly for sleep, would deftly trim and arrange the strip of satin that he never could manage properly himself. It was a regular little ritual, Toby watching eagerly from the bed across the room.

c You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Uncle Paul,' she said another time, holding up a mysterious garment, 'I never saw such holes—never!' And then she darned the said socks with result that were picturesque if not always entirely satisfactory. And once she sewed the toes so tightly 'across with her darning that he could not get his foot into them. She allowed no one else to touch; them, however. Little the child guessed that while she patched his clothes, she wove his life afresh at the same time.

And with all the children he took Dick's place more and more. His existence widened, filled up; he felt in touch with real things as of old in the woods; the children replaced the trees.

But it was Nixie in particular who crept close to his unsatisfied heart and tied him to her inner life with the gossamer threads of her sand-coloured hair. This elfin little being, with her imagination and tenderness, brought to him something he had never known before, never dreamed of even; a perfect companionship; a companionship utterly unclouded.

And the other children understood it; there was no jealousy; it was not felt by them as favouritism. Natural and right it seemed, and was.

'You must ask Nixie,' Jonah would say in reply to any question concerning his uncle's welfare or habits. 'She's his little mother, you know.'

For, truth to tell, they were born, these two, in the same corner of the world of fantasy, bred under the same stars, and fathered by the same elemental forces. But for the trick of the years and the accident of blood, they seemed made for one another ideally, eternally.

Things he could speak of to no one else found in her a natural and easy listener. To grown-ups he had never been able to talk about his mystic longings; the very way they listened made such things instantly seem foolish. But Nixie understood in her child-way, not because she was sympathetic, but because she was in and of them. He was merely talking the language of her own world. He no longer felt ashamed to 'think aloud.' Most people were in pursuit of such stupid, clumsy things—fame, money, and other complicated and ugly things—but this child seemed to understand that he cared about Realities only; for, in her own simple way, this was what she cared about too.

To talk with her cleared his own mind, too, in a way it had never been cleared before. He came to understand himself better, and in so doing swept away a great deal of accumulated rubbish; for he found that when his thought was too confused to make clear to her, it was usually false, wrong—not real.

'I can't make that out,' she would say, with a troubled face. 'I suppose, I'm not old enough yet.' And afterwards Paul would realise that it was himself who was at fault, not the child. Her instinct was unerring; whereas he, with those years of solitude behind him, sometimes lost himself in a region where imagination, self-devouring, ran the risk of becoming untrue, possibly morbid. Her wholesome little judgments brought sanity and laughter.

For, like other mystical temperaments, what he sought, presumably, was escape from himself, yet not—and herein he differed healthily from most of his kidney—so much from his Real Inner Self, as from its outer pettiness and limitations. True, he sought union with something larger and more perfect, and in so far was a mystic; but this larger 'something,' he dimly understood, was the star of his own soul not yet emancipated, and in so far he remained a man of action. His was the true, wholesome mysticism; hysteria was not—as with most—its chief ingredient. Moreover, this other, eternal part of him touched Eternity. To be identified with it meant to be identified with God, but never for one instant to lose his own individuality.

And to express himself through the creative imagination, to lose his own smallness by interpreting beauty, he had always felt must be a halfway house to the end in view. His inability, therefore, to find such means of expression had always meant something incalculably grave, something that hindered growth. But now this child Nixie, in some extraordinary yet utterly simple fashion, had come to show him the way. It was wonderful past finding out. He hardly knew himself how it had come about. Yet, there she was, ever by his side, pointing to ways that led him out into expression.

No woman could have done it. His two longings, he came to realise, were actually one: the desire to express his yearnings grew out of the desire to find God.

And so it was that the thought of her growing up was horrid to him. He could not bear to think of her as a young woman moving in a modern world where she would lose all touch with the elemental forces of vision and simplicity whence she drew half her grace and wonder. Already for him, in some mystical fashion of spiritual alchemy, she had become the eternal feminine, exquisitely focussed in the little child. With the advance of years this must inevitably pass from her, as she increased the distance from her source of inspiration.

'Nixie, you must promise never to grow up,' he would say, laughing.

'Because Aventures stop then, don't they?' she asked.

'Partly that,' he answered.

'And I should get tired, like mother; or stupid, like the head gardener,' she added. 'I know. But I don't think I ever shall, somehow. I think I am meant to be always like this.'

The serious way she said this last phrase escaped him at the time. He remembered it afterwards, however.

It was so delightful, too, to read out his stories and aventures to her; they laughed over there and her criticisms often improved them vastly. He even read her his first poem without shyness, and they discussed each verse and talked about 'stealing Heaven's fire,' and the poor 'sparks' that never grew into flames. The 'kiss of fire' she thought' must be wonderful. She also asked what a 'lyre was. They made up other verses together too. But though they laughed and she asked odd questions, on the whole she grasped the sadness of the poem perfectly.

'Let's go and cry a bit somewhere,' she remarked quietly, her eyes very wistful. 'It helps it out! awfully, you know.'

He reminded her, however, of a sage remark of Toby's, to the effect that when men grew beards they lost the power to cry. Quick as a flash, then, she turned with one of her exquisite little bits of unconscious poetry.

'Let's go to the Gwyle then, and make the stream cry for us instead,' she said gravely, with a profound sympathy, 'because everybody's tears must get into the water some time—and so to the sea, mustn't they?'

And on their way, what with jumping ditches and flower-beds, they forgot all about the crying. On the edge of the woods, however, she raced up again to his side, her blue eyes full of a new wonder. 'I know that wind of inspiration that your poetry said never blew for you,' she cried. 'I know where it blows. Quick! I'll show you!' The pace made him pant a bit; he almost regretted he had mentioned it. 'I know where it blows, we'll catch it, and you shall see. Then you can always, always get it when you want it.'

And a little farther on, after wading through deep bracken, they stopped, and Nixie took his hand. 'Come on tiptoe now,' she whispered mysteriously. 'Don't crack the twigs with your feet.' And, smiling at this counsel of perfection, he obeyed to the best of his ability, while she pretended not to notice the series of explosions that followed his tread.

It was a curve in the skirts of the wood where they found themselves; a small inlet where the tide of daylight flowed against the dark cliffs of the firs, and then fell back. The thick trees held it at bay so that only the spray of light penetrated beyond, as from advancing waves. 'Thus far and no farther,' very plainly said the pine trees, and the sunshine lay there collected in the little hollow with the delicious heat of all the summer. It was a corner hitherto undiscovered by Paul; he saw it with the pleasure of a discovery.

And there, set brightly against the sombre background, stood the slender figure of a silver birch tree, all sweet and shining, its branches sifting the sunshine and the wind; while behind it, standing forth somewhat from the main body of the wood, a pine, shaggy and formidable, grew close as though; to guard it. The picture, with its striking contrast,? needed no imagination to make it more appealing,. It was patent to any eye.

'That's my tree,' said Nixie softly, with both arms linked about his elbow and her cheek laid against the sleeve of his coat. 'My fav'rite tree. And that's where your winds of inspiration blow that: you said you couldn't catch. So now you can always! come and hear them, you see.'

Paul entered instantly into the spirit of her dream. The way her child's imagination seized upon inanimate objects and incorporated them into the substance of her own life delighted him, for it was also his own way, and he understood it.

'Then that old pine,' he answered, pointing to the other, 'is my tree. See! It's come out of the wood to protect the little birch.'

The child ran from his side and stood close to them. 'Yes, and don't you see,' she cried, her eyes popping with excitement, 'this is me, and that's you!' She patted the two trunks, first the birch and then the pine. 'It's us! I never thought of that before, never! It's you looking after me and taking care of me, and me dancing and laughing round you all the time!' She ran back to his side and hopped up to plant a kiss in his beard. He quite forgot to correct her a'venturous grammar. 'Of course,' he cried, 'so it is. Look! The branches touch too. Your little leaves run up among my old needles!'

Nixie clapped her hands and ran to and fro, laughing and talking, on errands of further discovery, while Paul sat down to watch the scene and think his own thoughts. It was just the picture to appeal strongly to him. At any time the beauty of the tree would have seized him, but with no one else could he have enjoyed it in the same way, or spoken of his enjoyment. While Nixie flitted here and there in the sunshine, the little birch behind her bent down and then released itself with a graceful rush of branches as the pressure of the wind passed. Against the blue sky she tossed her leafy hands; then, with a passing shiver, stood still.

'I wonder,' ran his thought, 'why poets need invent Dryads when such an incomparable revelation lies plain in one of the commonest of trees like this?' And, at the same moment, he saw Nixie dart past between the fir trees and the birch, as though the very Dryad he was slighting had slipped out to chide him. Her hair spread in the sunshine like leaves. In the world of trees here, surely, was the very essence of what is feminine caught and imprisoned. Whatever of grace and wonder emanate from the face and figure of a young girl to enchant and bewitch here found expression in the silver stem and branches, in the running limbs so slender, in the twigs that bent with their cataracts of flying hair. Seen against the dark pinewood, this little birch tree laughed and danced; over that silver skin ran, positively, smiles; from the facets of those dainty leaves twinkled mischief and the joys of innocence. Here, in a word, was Nixie herself in the terms of tree-dom; and, as he watched, the wind swept out the branches towards him in a cluster of rustling leaves,—and at the same instant Nixie shot laughing to his side.

For a second he hardly knew whether it was the child or the silver birch that nestled down beside him and began to murmur in his ear.

'This is it, you see,' she was saying; 'and there's your wind of inspiration blowing now.'

'We shall have to alter the first verse then,' he said gravely:

'The winds of inspiration blow,

Yet never pass me by.'

'Of course, of course,' she whispered, listening half to her uncle, half to the rustle in the branches. 'And now,' she added presently, 'you can always come and write your poetry here, and it will be very-wonderfulindeed poetry, you see. And if you leave a bit of paper on the tree you'll find it in the morning covered with all sorts of things in very fine writing—oh, but very very fine writing, so small that no one can see it except you and me. One of the Little Winds we saw, you know, will twine round it and leave marks. And the big pine is you and the birch is me, isn't it?' she ended with sudden conviction.

The game, of course, was after her own heart. Up she sprang then suddenly again, picked a spray of leaves from a hanging branch, and brought it back to him.

'And here's a bit of me for a present, so that you can't ever forget,' she said with a gravity that held no smile. And she fastened it with much tugging and arranging in his buttonhole. 'A bit of my tree, and so of me.'

'Then I might leave a bit of paper in the water too,' he remarked slyly on their way home, 'so as to get the thoughts of the stream.'

'Easily,' she said, 'only it must be wrapped up in something. I'll get Jonah's sponge-bag and lend it you. Only you must promise faithfully to return it in case we go to the seaside in the summer.'

'And perhaps some of those tears we were talking about will stick on it and leave their marks before they go on to the sea,' he suggested.

'Oh, but they'd be too sad,' she answered quickly. 'They're much better lost in the sea, aren't they?'

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Thus the poetry in his soul that he could not utter, he lived. Without any conscious effort of the imagination, the instant Nixie, or the thought of her, stood beside him—lo, he was in Fairyland. It was so real that it was positively bewildering.

And the rest of that quiet household, without knowing it, contributed to its reality. For, to begin with, the place was delightfully 'out of the world'; and, after that, the gradations between the two regions seemed so easy and natural: the shadowy personality of his sister; the dainty little French governess flitting everywhere with her plaintive voice in the wake of the elusive children; then the children themselves—Jonah, the mischievous; Toby with her shining face of onion-skin; and, last of all, the host of tumbling animals, the mysterious cats, the kittens, all fluff and wonder; and the whole of it set amid the scenery of flowers, hills, and sea. It was impossible to tell exactly where the actual threshold lay, this shifting, fluid threshold dividing the two worlds; but there can be no question that Paul passed it day by day without the least difficulty, and that it was Nixie who knew all the quickest short-cuts.

And to all who—since childhood—have lived in Fairyland and tasted of its sweet innocence and loveliness, comes sooner or later the desire to transfer something of these qualities to the outer world. Paul felt this more and more as the days passed. The wish to beautify the lives of others grew in him with a sudden completeness that proved it to have been there latent all the time. Through the voices of Nixie, Jonah, and Toby, as it were, he heard the voices—those myriad, faint, unhappy voices—of the world's neglected children a-calling to him: 'Tell us the Aventures too!'—'Take us with you through 'that Crack!'—' Show us the Wind, and let us climb with you the Scaffolding of Night.'

And Paul, listening in his deep heart, began to understand that Nixie's education of himself was but a beginning: all unconsciously that elfin child was surely becoming also his inspiration. This first lesson in self-expression she had taught him was like the trickle that would lead to the bursting of the dam. The waters of his enthusiasms would presently pour out with the rush of genuine power behind them. What he had to say, do, and live—all forms of self-expression—were to find a larger field of usefulness than the mere gratification of his personal sense of beauty.

As yet, however, the thought only played dimly to and fro at the back of his mind, seeking a way of escape. The greater outlet could not come all at once. The germ of the desire lay there in secret development, but the thing he should do had not yet appeared.

So, for the time being, he continued to live in Fairyland and write Aventures.

It was really incalculable the effect of enchantment this little yellow-haired girl cast upon him—hard to believe, hard to realise. So true, so exquisite was it, however, that he almost came to forget her age, and that she was actually but a child. To him she seemed more and more an intimate companion to the soul who had existed always, and that both he and she were ageless. It was their souls that played, talked, caressed, not merely their minds or bodies In her flower-like little figure dwelt assuredly an old and ripened soul; one, too, it seemed to him sometimes, that hardly belonged to this work at all.

There was that about their relationship which made it eternal—it always had been somewhere it always would be—somewhere. No confinings of flesh, no limitations of mind and sense no conditions of mere time and space, could lay their burden upon it for long. It belonged most sweetly to the real things which are conditionless.

Moreover, one of the chief effects of the work of Faery, experts say, is that Time is done away with; emotions are inexhaustible and last for ever continually renewing themselves; the Fairies dance for years instead of only for a night; their minds and bodies grow not old; their desires, and the objects of their desires, pass not away.

'So, unquestionably,' said Paul to himself from time to time as he reflected upon the situation, 'I am bewitched. I must see what there is that I can do in the matter to protect myself from further depredations!'

Yet all he did immediately, so far as can be ascertained among the sources of this veracious history, was to collect the 'Aventures' already written and journey with them one fine day to London, where he had an interview of some length 'with a publisher—Dick's publisher. The result, at any rate, was—the records prove it—that some;time afterwards he received a letter in which it was plainly stated that 'the success of such a book is hard to predict, but it has qualities, both literary and imaginative, which entitle it to a hearing'; and thus that in due course the said 'Aventures of a Prisoner in Fairyland' appeared upon the bookstalls. For the publishers, being the foremost in the land, took the high view that seemed almost independent of mercenary calculations; and it is interesting to note that the years justified their judgment, and that the 'Aventures' may now be found upon the table of every house in England where there dwells a true child, be that child seven or seventy.

And any profits that Paul collected from the sale went, not into his own pocket, but were put aside, as the sequel shall show, for a secret purpose that lay hidden at this particular stage of the story among the very roots of his heart and being. The summer, meanwhile, passed quickly away, and August melted into September, finding hint? still undecided about his return to America.

For the rest, there was no hurry. There was another six months in which to make up his mind'; Meanwhile, also, he made frequent use of the 'Crack,' and the changes in his soul went rapidly forward.