by Algernon Blackwood (1929)

When Mr. T. Smith, the prominent stockbroker of Capel Court in the City of London, woke that morning, the sun was streaming into his comfortable bedroom in a respectable quarter of the region north of Hyde Park. He felt a curious sense of exhilaration, a strange glow of happiness. Like a boy who knows he has done well in an examination, he experienced a delightful, light-hearted anticipation. And this glow pervaded his whole being. It was as if he expected some happy event, a piece of luck, a glorious stroke of chance.

He could not define it, but he felt that it was there, almost within his grasp. So vivid was this happy emotion that he sprang from the bed and stood in his striped blue and white pyjamas, staring out of the open window. The sun on his bare neck was hot, birds were singing in the mangy cedar of the small garden, a few early hyacinths blazed just below him in a narrow strip of green. But he saw nothing to account for what he felt. The sparrows were dirtier than ever.

He was puzzled. Tightening the belt of his pyjamas which had become loose in sleep, he smoothed his scanty hair and rubbed his eyes.

"Had a dream, I suppose," he mumbled to himself. "A jolly dream sometimes does the trick," he added, opening his jacket wider to let the sun warm his scraggy chest. Only, he could not remember any dream.

Mr. T. Smith liked things explained properly, and this bright happiness lay beyond his explanation. It had nothing to do with his business, nothing to do with the buying and selling of shares. He knew that instinctively. His business was good, but it was not as good as that!

He stroked his bare chest and smiled. Something important was going to happen to him. He felt it in his bones. It was something that might alter his whole life. But of what kind, he asked himself, opening another button, and staring fixedly at the milkman in the area.

So methodical was Mr. T. Smith, so regular in his life, that this stir of emotion upset him rather. His business, inherited from an uncle, was steady and lucrative. "Mr. T. Smith and Co." was respected in the City. It was a family business, his clients too respectable to allow of mistakes. They lived and died prepared — by Mr. T. Smith and Co. Irregularities played no role. His quarters in North London were also eminently right. His landlady, Miss Slumbubble, had looked after him for twenty years. She even mended his clothes; added new pockets when his money, wearing holes, slipped through. The first time, he remembered, the new pocket was too deep, so that his hand dipped to his knee to find a coin. But that was years ago.

Withdrawing from the open window, where the milkman watched him with too much interest, he thought, Mr. T. Smith dressed and went down to breakfast.

"You 'ad a good night?" asked Miss Slumbubble as usual, bringing the invariable eggs and bacon. "You slep' well, Mr. Smith?"

"Better than ever, thank you, Miss Slumbubble," he replied, also as usual. He wondered if she noticed the excitement that still burned in him like a flame. He hoped not.

Apparently she did not. "That mattress," she observed, "is the best in London. And I always make your bed myself, Mr. Smith."

She had said this every morning for the past twenty years, and Mr. T. Smith knew exactly the reply she expected. "I thought you had." He produced it with a smile, and began to eat his eggs.

Only Miss Slumbubble could not know with what curious excitement he had sprung from the "best mattress in London" an hour ago, nor with what a strange sense of anticipatory happiness he started forth upon his day. He put his impeccable tie, if possible, straighter, he tugged at his moustache, he took his umbrella, he set forth. "I feel a bit of a dog, you know, this morning," he caught himself saying under his breath — then turned sharply, for Miss Slumbubble stood behind him. She invariably saw him off to the City.

"Ah! Good-bye, Miss Slumbubble," he exclaimed as usual. "I shall be back by seven o'clock."

"And your dinner will be ready for you, Mr. Smith," replied the landlady, also as usual. "And I 'ope it won't rain."

Mr. Smith paused before making his customary comment. As a rule he said "I trust not," but this morning the words refused to come as they had always come before.

"It can't — to-day," he heard himself saying.

But the door slammed behind him as he said it. He heard the bang. He was not sure whether Miss Slumbubble had caught his words or not. He laughed to himself. He pulled at his moustache. Usually, it felt soft, but now, he noticed, it felt stiff and wiry. It bristled, rather. He laughed again and set forth briskly to walk across the Park to his office. He had, after all, forgotten his umbrella. "Something's wrong with me," he chuckled to himself, "or — perhaps — it's something right." He laughed outright. "Anyhow, it's — different!"

Then, as he strode along, he suddenly recalled that Miss Slumbubble had made an unusual remark to him. His mind, occupied with something else at the moment, had not noticed it. Now it came back to him. When he said it could not rain to-day, her comment was unexpected.

Ordinarily, she would have said that "she oped not." This morning she said another thing: "Anything may 'appen," were the words she used.

"Anything," agreed Mr. T. Smith, laughing so happily that, as he crossed Bayswater Road into the Park, he nearly got run over.

II.

Following the routine of years, he strolled across the Park, intending to take a 'bus eventually at Trafalgar Square. But to-day he felt a strange reluctance to go to his office.

He fought against this, for what would people say if Mr. T. Smith was late? He had never been late. His reputation was based upon his punctuality. His clients would talk. Even Miss Slumbubble might hear of it. It would never do if he dawdled.

"Bother Miss Slumbubble!" he suddenly exclaimed. "And hang my clients! What does it matter if I am late!"

All the way something was singing in his heart. Perhaps it was that the spring was running in his blood. For now, at last, the spring had really come. Late in May the sun had finally struggled out, and the endless winter seemed to be gone for good. He saw a swallow darting past a chimney. A whiff of warm, scented air blew over him. He thought of gorse and pine trees on some sandy waste … of lizards … butterflies. …

He knew suddenly that it was something more than the spring. His whole being thrilled to a new rhythm. Someone — somewhere — had piped and he had heard. The real man had answered.

Not Mr. T. Smith of Capel Court, but the other one — Tornado Smith.

For he now abruptly remembered that he was named Tornado. Mr. T. Smith, most people thought, was Thomas Smith, even Timothy Smith, but actually his first name was Tornado. And surely he was not called Tornado for nothing!

It was the half-named Tornado that heard the queer piping and answered to it, the part of him that, against all judgment and reason, drove his little sailing boat out of the safety of the harbour into the wintry gales of his brief holidays — Tornado, the adventurer that underlay the man of business, the part of him that took wild, even ridiculous, risks from time to time. It was just this "something" belonging to "Tornado," that made him different from the jostling thousands he passed daily on his trudge to his office in the City.

Some spring, some bubble, danced now in his heart, discovered first, it seemed, in sleep.

His steps, unconsciously, became slower and slower. He found himself regretting that he could name no valid excuse for not turning up at the office. At every opportunity he paused and looked about him. He studied the shop windows with the closest attention, as if he had never seen them before — anything to prolong his walk. He was waiting for something. But what that "something" was he had no idea.

"Tornado," he repeated to himself with a new feeling of its significance. As though his father had been a whirlwind, his mother a storm. It made him laugh, as he dawdled on, staring at this and that, idling, drifting, waiting …

Still, it was not till he had reached Trafalgar Square that he came definitely to a halt. The office seemed suddenly more than he could bear. He stopped dead. Something plucked at his heart. He watched the pigeons drinking at the fountains. He was very late already. He knew quite well that his secretary, with a bundle of tiresome letters, was fuming and fussing; clients were wondering why Mr. T. Smith was late. The telephone was ringing … ringing …

"Well, let it ring!" he thought to himself. "And let the secretary wait! And let the clients wonder why I'm late! It'll do them all good!"

He lingered in the warm sunshine, watching the pigeons preen themselves after their bath, or carrying on the love affairs that the sudden spell of fine weather provoked. The London sparrows, even the flies, detained him.

He caught himself wondering why he still lived in London. He had already made a good deal of money, enough to retire on. Why did he still waste what remained of his early manhood in this hateful way?

Were there not other lands that he could visit, lands with blue skies and sparkling seas? Countries free from the bugbear of what men called "progress," more primitive, perhaps, yet at the same time more peaceful? Places where people still sang at their work in the hot sunshine … ?

He thought of all he had read about the lotus-lands of the East and of scattered isles in the Pacific, of coral reefs and golden strands. It was difficult to believe all the stories he had read about such places, though he remembered the strange chill the reading had given him at the time. There ought to be, there must be, he felt, countries just like that, countries where things happened, countries where the inhabitants did more than merely catch 'buses and run for electric trains. He recalled the sunny, golden advertisements he had read, the travel-folders.

And he tried in his mind to decide if there was any place that absolutely fulfilled his requirements. He felt a little doubtful. Nothing short of a real fairyland would do.

For a long time he stood thus, gazing into the shimmering fountain, but he no longer saw the water where the dirty pigeons bathed. He saw the long line of a coral reef with the great combers breaking over it in silvery foam against a background of waving coconut palms on some enchanted island of the Southern Seas. Soft winds brushed his cheeks. He heard the sea-birds cry.

Dimly he became aware that a small boy was standing beside him, gazing up into his face with large dark eyes. It was these enquiring eyes that first arrested his attention, for they shared, it seemed, his own vision, and saw what he saw. They were looking, surely, at something the others did not see.

Yet the boy, at the first glance, seemed commonplace enough — like hundreds of others one saw pouring out of school in a back street. Poorly clad, with a thin, half-starved body, there was nothing about him the least attractive. On the second glance, however, Tornado saw that there was a difference. His features were finer than those of the average slum child. In spite of his poor clothes, he carried himself with a certain air, a kind of unconscious grace that suggested some wild animal.

Mr. T. Smith of Capel Court found himself staring at him — as a dog or other wild creature stares — full of interest, curiosity, wonder, all of them spontaneous and unconscious.

"Buy a ticket, sir," said the boy in a pleasant, piping voice. "They're only a shilling."

"But where can I go — in these days — for a shilling?" Tornado asked, smiling.

"All the way," the boy answered gravely.

"All the way!" echoed Tornado doubtfully, his heart beating.

He saw that the boy actually held pieces of blue paper in his hand that looked like tickets. The sight troubled him.

"Of course," he stammered, "of course, I will." He tried to look as if he were amused, while actually a lump rose somewhere in his throat, as he handed the boy a shilling and took the blue strip of paper in exchange. His hand was shaking.

The little fellow turned to go, then stopped suddenly and came back.

"Be careful never to lose it, Tornado," he said shyly. "Full directions are written on the back." And he turned away a second time.

"But — how do you know my name?" enquired Tornado, trembling now all over.

The strange boy smiled up into his face. It was an entrancing smile.

"Oh, we know our customers," he said softly. "They are so few."

"You don't sell many then?" began Tornado.

This time the boy was really gone. It almost seemed as if he had vanished. He melted away so quickly into the passing throng.

Tornado looked at the blue slip of paper in his hand. On the back, sure enough, were some lines of writing. The thin, spidery letters were queer looking, and, instead of ink, some silvery liquid had been used. But the directions, once he mastered the script, were plain:

"Be at the Robin Hood Gate at Richmond Park before noon," he read, "and there you will see a girl knitting beneath an oak tree with a cat beside her. Show her this paper and she will put you on your way."

III.

For some time Tornado turned the paper over and over in his hand. Of course, it was all nonsense. It was some charity stunt, some treasure hunt organised to get money for a hospital. It was one of these modern tricks that extort money out of the sentimental crowd … And yet the whole thing fell in so well with his idle mood that it provided just the excuse he needed — not to go to his office.

"I will go," he informed himself, rather like a truant boy, "for the park will be lovely, and there may be somebody there!"

He started off.

Looking back afterwards, Tornado often thought that the strangest thing about this strange business was that, the moment he decided to go, no further thought of his neglected work, of his office, or even of his old life, ever crossed his mind. It was as if his normal life had ended suddenly. He seemed to have begun a new existence, while yet this "new existence" seemed always to have been there. It had always been within reach, only he had never found the way. The old shackles and ties were now cut through, at any rate, and a new and thrilling sense of freedom swept over him.

He had found liberty at last! He felt like a gipsy who leaves the old familiar camp behind him, knowing that the entire world is his to roam as he will. His office, his rooms, Miss Slumbubble, were wiped out as though they never had existed.

How he reached Richmond Park he never quite knew. No memory remains. Whether it was by 'bus or taxi, on foot, or otherwise, he could not say. It seemed to him sufficient that he found himself at the Robin Hood Gate in an incredibly short time. He was simply — there.

He looked about him eagerly, but at first could see no one that answered in any way to the description on his ticket. The sun blazed down from a cloudless sky; the trees and grasses still held the freshness of early spring; the scent of the good clean earth was in his nostrils. And he drew in deep breaths of sheer delight at getting away so easily from the noise and smell of the city. The day was radiant, sparkling. His blood stirred within him.

A park keeper, he noticed, was chatting idly with a nurse girl, and an occasional car swept along the roadway with a swirl of dust, yet without a sound. They were like pictures only. But nowhere could he discover a girl beneath an oak tree with a cat beside her.

Putting his hand into his pocket, he pulled out the blue ticket, intending to read it over once again, but, even as his hand closed on it, he became aware that he was looking straight at the object of his search.

There sat a girl beneath an oak tree, exactly as described, and a black cat was licking its paws beside her. He gazed. A moment before the spot was empty. Yet no surprise stirred in him. This, somehow, was just what he expected.

He was excited, but not troubled. A flicker of nerves, however, it seems, ran through him, for he dropped his ticket, and as it fluttered down and he stooped hurriedly to recover it, the girl and cat both vanished too. He could not be quite sure, perhaps, being too intent on picking it up again. Yet it was nowhere to be seen. Only a large green leaf lay at his feet. He grabbed it instantly — and, sure enough, he again held the ticket in his hand.

After all, he must have been mistaken about the disappearance of the girl and cat. There they both were in front of him, as plain as life.

He advanced. The girl watched him coming. She smiled.

"I'm glad you found your ticket," she said. "I was afraid you might have lost it altogether — like the others." Her voice was soft.

"Do most people lose it?" he found himself asking.

"Most, yes," she replied.

"And can you really show me the way?" he went on, after a pause.

The girl seemed amused at the question.

"Of course I can," she replied.

Something within him hesitated and was afraid. He was afraid of the question he wanted to ask, afraid that the reply would never satisfy him. He took a gulp of breath. Then he asked his question.

"Is it to — Fairyland?" came his whisper. Is that what the ticket means — all the way to Fairyland?"

"I live there," replied the girl simply, "and my name is Chance. My sister, Luck, lives with me," she added, pointing to the cat.

"But how can a cat be your sister?" Tornado asked.

The girl, without answering, looked at the cat, and Tornado, following her glance, met the full glare of the cat's eyes. He felt a faint shiver run through him. No further answer seemed necessary. The eyes that met his own were not the eyes of a cat, nor of a human being. They were the eyes, he realised of a spirit — the eyes of something — of someone — who had seen the birth and death of worlds, yet still lived on.

A feeling of chill swept over him. Questions that sprang to his lips died in his throat and remained unuttered. His breath failed him for some seconds. He stared from one to the other uncertainly, and for several minutes no one spoke.

With an effort, Tornado looked towards the park gates. To his surprise some subtle change was already at work. The gates became dim, the nurse girl and the keeper appeared less distinct. He gazed hard, trying to focus his sight, but a tenuous veil seemed to have fallen between him and the familiar world he knew of old. No effort he made could pierce it quite. This queer soft gauze fell between his sight and what he had always known as Reality.

He turned again to the girl. Change seemed to be at work in her too. She looked less homely somehow. Her hair, which he had before described to himself as a washed-out blond, had deepened in colour; her rather faded blue eyes had lightened up. It was as if some hidden lamp shone through. She began to glow, to radiate light. Second by second her beauty increased. A kind of radiance seemed to surround her like a cloud, and this light glimmered everywhere through the air.

Tornado next became aware that in some strange way he, too, was changing. Slight tremors ran through him from his head to his feet. He felt that he was altering, adapting himself in some way to a changed condition of existence.

Everything in him, he felt, was being speeded up in marvellous fashion, quickened, heightened, swept into higher, swifter gears. His thoughts now tore through him at intenser speed. Rapidity was the keynote. Soon, at this pace, he would pass beyond the need of ordinary thought at all, of thought as men knew it. A new power was invading him. Already he seemed beyond the need of speech with his companions. Words, syllables, were unnecessary, for in some strange way they answered his unuttered questions. The blood raced through his veins with a power that seemed strong enough to rend his body in pieces. The tear and rush were furious. Yet he remained utterly indifferent. In this new state the loss of his ordinary bodily sensations, perhaps even of his body too, appeared a matter too trivial to notice. There were more interesting things to think of than that.

All the familiar landmarks were already gone. The park gates, the keeper and the keeper's lodge had long since vanished, and only the tops of the biggest trees remained above a kind of whitish mist. Even while he looked these, too, disappeared with a kind of spiral swirl. The familiar world had faded.

He found himself upon a sandy path running through long heather to a lonely sand beach.

The sun shone brightly on the sparkling water, and far away he could just make out the dim shape of an island. Gulls wheeled about the shore, and a heron, on lazy wing, passed circling over his head.

He looked round for his companions. The cat had gone, and in its place stood a dark and lovely girl. Her sister, the fair one, stood beside her, smiling gravely.

"You may call us Chance and Luck," she said, "for thus are we known among men. But these are only names. Others call us Fate and Destiny, though these, too, are wrong. In reality there is only the Deed and the Payment." She paused and gazed into his eyes. "Perhaps, this is too hard for you," she went on gently, "but, if so, Merlin will explain, for he is the wisest of those who dwell in Fairyland."

IV.

Tornado was in no mood to quibble about names, or as to what Chance meant by her talk of Merlin. He felt a new life pulsing through his veins, and his heart sang with happiness. He noted, almost without astonishment, that he had shed his old clothes somewhere on the journey, his usual City clothes. Now he stood clad only in a leather jerkin with bare and sunburnt legs, and instead of shoes he wore rough sandals of deer's hide. A long hunting knife swung at his belt. Only one thing was missing, a familiar thing that ought to have been there too. What it was he could not say. He recognised its absence — no more than that.

He noted these changes without surprise, but at the same time there came a fugitive flash of memory — a memory of a dream, perhaps, that had come to him only last night. Dreams have this way of cropping up in stray fragments sometimes.

"Miss — er — Slum —" he could not get the whole name, "and that place of torture I was going to in my dreams — a bell ringing, ringing — letter — lots of letters — Mr. T. Smith — ." He passed his hand across his eyes in a vague effort to remember — "dear, dear, what a horrid dream it was — and there's something I've forgotten — I wonder if — "

His eyes caught the figures of the two girls running past him, and all memory of his dream slipped from his consciousness in the way dreams always slip away and are forgotten. His years had fallen from him like the leaves of a tree, and the vigour of youth was in his blood. Adventure was calling to him with her deathless voice. Laughing, he ran down the path to join his two companions on the edge of the water. He saw their gleaming white legs as they stepped into a small sailing-boat lying in the cover, its bow resting on the yellow sand, its stern just afloat. As he reached them they paused and looked at him. They leaped back to join him, sitting down on the sand and motioning to him to do the same.

Tornado sat down beside them.

"There's the boat that will take you to Fairyland," said Chance, smiling at him mischievously. "Have you the courage to go in her?"

"I think so," he replied. "What are the dangers?"

The two sisters whispered together for a moment. It was Luck who answered him:

"There is the danger of never getting back," she said, "of never returning. It takes courage, too, to cross the Dragon Field to get to your home."

"My home!" he exclaimed.

Looking at him encouragingly, they laughed, and their laughter, he thought, was like the music of bells coming faintly, sweetly across summer meadows.

"Your home, yes," explained Chance. "Hasn't your home always been here? Haven't you yourself made it here? Through all the dull years, haven't you dreamed of a little house on the edge of the forest, near a pool where the deer come down to drink at nightfall? And a glade where the stags roar when the autumn leaves are falling? And a sailing boat that will take you far away to some enchanted isle? And a girl, perhaps, with dark hair or with blond, and smiling eyes and happy laughter?"

He knew it was all too true. For years and years, all through his life, he had dreamed such things. From boyhood he had dreamed of fords where knights-errant held the crossings against all comers. Sometimes in his dreams he had seen a battlemented town gay with flags, with strange old-world houses and narrow, twisting streets. Time after time he had seen the same town, so that in the end it had become as familiar to him as his own small bit of London. He could find his way about it quite well. He knew where the armourer had his shop and where the leather-workers lived. Even the faces of the people who kept the market stalls in the quaint little square by the church were all familiar. Yet he was never quite sure of his own standing in the town. Even in his dreams he was a little puzzled. Some of the people saw and recognised him, but others completely ignored him as though he was not there. All the same, he felt that it was his own town in a sense. He knew it all, from the archery butts to the tilting ground, where brave tournaments were held with the splintering of lances.

He looked at his two companions. He saw that they read his thoughts, and that there was no need of explanations.

"Tell me, please, about the Dragon Field," he said, a queer trembling shyness in him. "Are they dangerous?"

"They are terrifying," said Luck. "You see, they are the Guardians, and they don't let everybody by. They will not touch you."

"Whom do they stop?" he asked.

Luck reflected a moment. "Oh, quite a lot of people," she replied presently. "Those who are cruel to animals and children chiefly. Then money-grubbers and gluttons, the kind that are always thinking of their comfort and their clothes and their looks. Fat people, too, with shiny skins. You know the sort."

Tornado sighed. "Of course," he agreed, "it would never do to let them in. They would make the place impossible."

"And people who never, never take any sort of risk?" Luck added.

"Ah!" said Tornado to himself, and fell to thinking.

"Is that Fairyland that I see over there?" he asked after a while, pointing to a misty island far away. He had noticed it when he first arrived at the beach. Very dim and distant it seemed.

Luck's expression and voice were graver as she answered. "You would find it difficult to land there," she told him. "That is called Hi Bresil by some, by others the Isle of Avalon. The souls of those who perish on some high adventure go there. It is where King Arthur went to rest after his last battle and before he came back to take possession of his two kingdoms."

"His two kingdoms?" Tornado exclaimed.

"Yes," replied Luck, "for does he not reign for ever in the hearts of the young — and in Fairyland?"

She turned and looked at her sister, exchanging an understanding smile, then turned back to Tornado.

"And now we must leave you," she said. "There is your boat. Follow that gull with the black patch on his wing, and he will guide you."

The two sisters drew aside and waited, and though Tornado could have gone on talking with them for ever, he realised by the tone of the girl's voice, as also by the smile he had seen on both their faces, that it was time for him to go. He, at any rate, was not one of those who never take a risk, he tried to assure himself.

He got into the boat and stepped the mast. A light wind had sprung up, blowing off the land. He said good-bye to the two girls and pushed off boldly. He set the sail. Gaily the little craft slid through the water towards its strange and distant goal, as, looking back, he saw Luck and Chance still standing on the yellow beach, side by side, watching him. He waved his hand and they waved back. A moment later, when he turned again, he saw them turn and walk away inland till they disappeared among the trees.

The gull flew steadily ahead, occasionally soaring high up into the blue, at other times diving down and lightly skimming the tops of the waves. Sometimes it flew round and round the boat for a few moments, passing close to Tornado's head and peering into his face with its bright peeping eyes.

The wind increased the farther he left the shore, and Tornado found that his little boat was really travelling quite fast through the water. He soon lost sight of land, and only the misty shores of Hi Bresil were visible far ahead. He must have sailed like this for some hours before he discerned a dark spot on the horizon. The wind was rising all this time, and his boat seemed to travel ever faster and faster, leaping from wave to wave like a thing possessed.

For the past hour or two he had been afraid of driving her under and had cased her occasionally, but seeing how bravely she sailed he now let her have her head, comforting himself with the thought that she was a magic boat in any case and ought to know how to keep afloat.

The land drew nearer. He was now rapidly getting near enough to distinguish details. Tall hills, he saw, rose inland, but close along the shore the ground seemed to be flat and wooded. He could see no signs of houses or inhabitants. The coast appeared utterly deserted. But it was also an iron-bound coast. Great rocks jutted out into the sea and the waves broke white over them. The flat portions of the shore, he now saw, were few and far between.

It looked impossible for a small boat to make the land; but Tornado, with blind faith in the gull, followed where it led — straight in towards the rocks. Once or twice, he noticed, the bird turned its head quickly as though to reassure him. Nearer and nearer they came, and though he felt a little sick with fear, there was no turning back now. The roar of the surf thundered all round him, the spray wet his face, and the boat felt the surge of the great combers as they hurled themselves over the jagged rocks. He held his breath.

At the last moment, when everything seemed lost, a narrow channel opened suddenly before him, and the little boat swept through between the dangerous rocky walls into a tiny cove. Once inside, all was quiet. The wind, shut off by the high walls all round, hardly rippled the surface of the blue water which lapped peacefully along the narrow sandy bay. And, to his surprise, he saw that there was actually a little pier made of rough slabs of stone, with a ring of twisted withies to which he could fasten his boat. A moment later he had tied her up and leapt ashore.

The gull, as if satisfied that its job was done, flew several times round his head, screaming shrilly as though to say goodbye, and then headed straight out to sea. Tornado waved his hand in farewell. He fancied he saw it flirt its wing with the black spot by way of answer. He watched it disappear into the blaze of sunshine above the wide blue sea.

V.

Tornado stood still for some time, taking stock of his surroundings. There seemed to be a footpath from the pier that led directly into the forest. It lost itself at once among the dense trees. After examining the ground in all directions this path appeared the only way he could go, for the shore revealed no openings, and behind him was, of course, the open sea, His best, his only, plan was to follow where it led, since it must, at any rate, lead somewhere.

"Now for the dragons!" he thought uneasily, as a wave of misgiving swept over him. Instinctively, as he started, he loosened the long hunting knife at his belt, although he knew quite well that it would be useless against a dragon that really meant business. The undoubted fact that he was taking a risk pleased him nevertheless; it proved him worthy of being admitted to Hi Bresil.

As he went cautiously along, keeping his eyes on both sides and in front as well, the trees grew thicker and thicker, larger and larger, so that at last he appeared to be walking in a kind of green tunnel, the branches meeting above his head. Here and there a splash of sunlight stole through and turned some strange flower by the path into a flaming jewel. His feet made no sound on the mossy ground. Silent as the grave the forest was, for no wind stirred.

Quite suddenly, the path led into the open, the trees fell away, and a large clearing lay before him. Deer were grazing quietly all over it. Tornado stiffened like a dog scenting game and almost unconsciously slipped behind a tree to watch them. There were red deer and fallow, here and there an occasional roe, while in the distance he saw other deer that were quite strange to him. But, as his eyes swept the herds, picking out the best beasts in each, his attention was suddenly held by the sight of another animal altogether, and a very weird one.

It was lying down when he first saw it, but, as he watched, it rose slowly and stretched itself. Larger than a stag, he noticed, and coloured like a rocking-horse, dappled black and white, There was no mistaking what it was when he saw the long straight horn coming out of the forehead. He caught his breath. It was the unicorn. Its eyes gazed gently about it, as though, without being alarmed, it somehow knew that a stranger was in its neighbourhood.

"What a gracious, splendid creature!" he exclaimed to himself as he gazed, and a thrill ran through him, for he knew that the unicorn roams no other pastures save those of Fairyland, and that he had, therefore, really arrived,

He must have stood behind his tree for a long time watching the stately creature, his eyes wandering towards the deer as well, for he had quite forgotten the matter of dragons being possibly in the neighbourhood, when there came a sudden roaring in the sky, and Tornado, quickly looking up, saw six dark shapes rushing downwards at tremendous speed towards the forest; indeed, towards the very clearing at whose edge he stood concealed. What looked like jets of flame preceded them, issuing, apparently, from their mouths. They made a curious loud rattling sound, with other noises that were half hooting and half growling.

"Bless my soul!" he exclaimed. "The dragons!"

The shock to his mind and nerves was very considerable, yet his interest was so intense that his fear was not more than he could manage. It was odd, however, that just at this very moment when his entire attention should have been occupied with this arresting sight, he found time to think of something else, viz., that he had forgotten something. This certainty that some familiar object was missing came back again. His hand flew to his knife, but the knife was in its place. There was another thing he ought to have had with him, only for the life of him he could not remember what it was. It was something he always carried. He used it for protection overhead. What it was, however, he could not imagine. He had not got it — that was all he knew.

This thought flashed through his mind, then vanished utterly — and he concentrated all his attention again on the dragons. They were much lower now, just above the tree-tops, in fact, and one by one he saw them plane down into the clearing and settle among the feeding deer as quietly as though they were so many crows. The deer, too, seemed undisturbed by their arrival, moving calmly to one side to give them room to land. The unicorn went on rubbing its horn against a tree.

Only they were most certainly not crows. The jets of flame that had poured out of their nostrils while they were in full flight had died down, but a red glow showed when they opened their tremendous mouths, while thin wisps of smoke curled round their jagged lips and floated upwards into the still air. Their huge sides rose and fell as they breathed, accompanied by an odd noise, half rattling, half clanking, that was almost metallic, and came, it seemed, from their interior.

Tornado now felt really frightened. The appearance of these monstrous brutes was chilling to the blood. Any one of them could have swallowed him at a single gulp; their fiery breath could burn him to an ash in a moment; a blow from a single tail — and he would be reduced to a pulp of broken bones and flesh. They were covered, he saw, with bright green scales which gave out a clashing sound as they moved, Their legs and claws were a brilliant scarlet, while their eyes, as large as soup plates, glowed with alternate red and green as though lit by some internal fire.

On landing they had folded their wings, which towered above their backs fully thirty feet into the air.

He stared and stared, and the more he stared the less he liked them. He realised that their arrival coincided too accurately with his own; they arrived because he had arrived. The whole six of them, he noticed, had drawn themselves up directly opposite to where he hid behind his tree, and the path he had been following, the only path there was, ran right through the middle of them. They had arranged themselves with military precision, three on each side of the path.

Peering cautiously round the trunk that sheltered him, he noticed these details, And his heart sank into his deerskin sandals.

Yet his profound trust in what Luck and Chance had told him did not waver. So far, he reflected, he had come safely owing to their guidance. He realised he must trust them to the end, or else fail to prove himself worthy of his quest. His muscles, however, were like paper in his legs. He dared not, could not, move — when, suddenly, he heard a far, shrill cry, and, looking up, he saw the gull with the spotted wing in the air above the trees. It circled once, peeped down at him, uttered its shrill cry a second time, and vanished into space.

It was this that decided him to act. Summoning up all his courage, he took the risk. He stepped out from behind his tree and walked slowly but steadily forwards in the direction of the waiting dragons.

The nearer he drew to them the less he liked it. His blood was water. He trembled. But he walked fairly straight, giving no outward sign of flinching. Only a few yards now separated him from the first couple in the dreadful row, and he realised that there was only just room to pass between them without actually touching. The slightest stumble, leaning an inch to right or left, would mean that he would brush the awful jaws. Indeed, as he moved slowly forward, the dragon on the right yawned widely, showing an enormous mouth with huge pointed teeth and a red tongue that flickered in and out with a ghastly significance. It was licking its great lips, of course. But the behaviour of its companion facing it on the left seemed even more ominous, for its immense tail began to twitch and swing from side to side like the tail of a cat before it springs. It seemed to be gathering its vast legs under it as a kitten does when it leaps playfully at a ball.

Tornado felt himself as the ball. His body dripped with perspiration. His legs only just supported him. But he still kept moving with slow steps forward, nearer and ever nearer.

At last he was actually between the first pair of mighty heads. The creatures eyed him, but did not move. He passed slowly onwards. He reached the second pair, whose eyes similarly followed him, the bodies keeping motionless. A whiff of burning brimstone came to his nostrils, blended, he fancied, with another smell that was curiously familiar, though he could not name it. He knew the name, but it had vanished with another part of his life which, equally, was forgotten.

The dragons, as he passed further between four more pairs of heads, never moved, though following him steadily with their fiery eyes.

When half way down the line Tornado only just controlled a violent impulse to make a sudden run for it. It occurred to him to dash wildly forward as fast as ever he could sprint — and trust to luck. But as the idea took form in his mind, the words "trust to Luck" brought the quick knowledge that to carry out his plan would betray cowardice and failure. To trust to Luck and Chance was not to run away. There was Destiny. And Destiny, though implacable, obeyed courage and determination. He held on his dreadful way to the end.

And the end came, at last, without disaster. He passed the final pair of monsters safely. Not one of the dragons had moved. Now that he was beyond them, though only a few feet, they still crouched unmoved upon the forest sward. Joy! He had not failed himself! He had proved worthy of the heritage of Hi Bresil, if only by the skin of his teeth!

Trying not to break into a run, Tornado, his breath irregular, his heart thumping like a little drum, followed the path. The unicorn came close, lowered its stately head, and nuzzled his shoulder with its dangerous pointed horn. He looked a moment into its gentle eyes. The herds of deer divided quietly to let him pass, then fell to feeding again, quite undisturbed. In fact, he had to wait once while a large company of them crossed in front of him.

He had not looked back as yet, but now he heard suddenly a tremendous rattling clatter, a hissing and a hooting, and, turning his head, he saw the great dragons take the air. It was a wondrous sight. They rose without effort, snorting fire and smoke, their scales making a din of clanking metal, and, once above the trees, he saw the whole six pass across the sky in a wedge-shape formation like a skein of monstrous geese. They became smaller and smaller as they rose into upper space, their roaring died away, they were gone.

Neither the deer nor the unicorn, he noticed, paid the slightest attention to this great commotion. Silence and peace descended again upon the forest.

VI.

Tornado drew a deep breath and felt happier than ever in his life before. Such happiness seemed incredible, yet he experienced it. He was coming closer and closer to something he had always yearned for. He longed to wait a while and make closer friends with the attractive unicorn, but some instinct warned him that he must not linger, but should push on farther, for the climax of what he sought lay yet in front of him.

He had now reached the far side of the clearing. The sun was sinking, the shadows growing longer. He began to think vaguely about food, about where and how he was going to sleep as well. He was not tired, but sleep when the sun went down seemed natural. Should he lie down on the moss and ferns? Should he look about for berries? The music of a tinkling stream reminded him that he was thirsty. He knelt down and drank his fill of sparkling water.

As he rose to his feet again the forest, it seemed, wore another look. It was not quite the same as when he knelt down a minute ago. He gazed about him. There was a certain curious change, he fancied. He felt he had seen it before. The fringe of the woods he was now approaching wore almost a familiar guise. This old impression grew stronger as he walked slowly on. The path, unless he was mistaken, would presently take a sharp turn to the left just beyond that old gnarled oak tree. There would be a cottage with a pool of water beside it. He would go up and knock on the door, and the door would open …

Sure enough, it proved exactly as he imagined. Leaving the forest, the path turned sharply to the left. There stood the cottage, the cottage of his desires, and the pool that he had loved so long in dream. And that figure among the sunflowers, was it Luck or Chance? He could not quite see. It disappeared behind the rows of sunflowers where he saw the unicorn gazing gently at him over the towering foxgloves. It was coming in by the way back, of course, to open to him. His heart rose triumphantly within him. He wanted to shout and sing. He had at last come — Home!

Tornado, his blood pulsing with this happiness, strode boldly up to the door. He knocked confidently. He stood waiting a moment. No one came at first. He knocked again, but still no one came; there was no sound of a footfall. A vague feeling of disquietude stole over him. Ah! there was another way of getting in, he seemed to remember, and his hand went automatically down the side of his leg as if hunting for something he expected to find there.

Was it a pocket he sought? His pocket, at any rate, was there as usual. The thing he looked for, too, lay hard and firm inside it. He drew out his key and inserted it without effort in the lock. The door opened easily as usual. He went in, also as usual. There before him stood his girl-secretary, a pile of letters behind her on the desk, again as usual.

A bell was ringing impatiently, ringing, ringing …

The girl's face wore a half reproachful look as she bade him respectfully good morning.

"A little late, am I … ?" offered Mr. T. Smith, a trifle apologetically. "I — er — walked the whole way, I'm afraid. The morning," he added, "was so fine, you know … "

"Yes, Mr. Smith," replied the girl. "A pity it's clouded over since." She turned away to answer the telephone, which kept on ringing, ringing.

Even as she said the words he noticed that the first early brilliance indeed had passed. The sky outside was dark and lowering. Rain obviously threatened. The girl was gabbling at the telephone. He waited, listening.

"Miss Slumbubble, sir," she reported, laying the receiver down. "To say you forgot your umbrella. She's sending it at once by messenger."

"Oh — ah — yes," he murmured vaguely. "I — knew I had forgotten — something."

He glanced at his watch. After all, he was only fifteen minutes late.

And perhaps another fifteen minutes had passed when a small messenger boy arrived with his umbrella, offering a piece of blue paper which Mr. T. Smith signed by way of receipt, having first paid the little bright-eyed lad a shilling. He signed, without thinking, "Tornado Smith."