'Cousinenry,' he heard close to his ear, so soft it almost might have been those tree-tops whispering to the night, 'do you know anything about a Star Cave--a place where the starlight goes when there are no eyes or puddles about to catch it?' A Star Cave! How odd! His own boyhood's idea. He must have mentioned it to his cousin perhaps, and _he_ had told the children. And all that was in him of nonsense, poetry, love rose at a bound as he heard it. He felt them settle themselves more comfortably upon his knees. He forgot to think about the points and angles. Here surely a gateway was opening before his very feet, a gateway into that world of fairyland the old clergyman had spoken about. A great wave of tenderness swept him--a flood strong and deep, as he had felt it long ago upon the hill of that Kentish village. The golden boyhood's mood rushed over him once more with all its original splendour. It took a slightly different form, however. He knew better how to direct it for one thing. He pressed the children closer to his side. 'A what?' he asked, speaking low as they did. 'Do I know a what?' 'A cave where lost starlight collects,' Monkey repeated, 'a Star Cave.' And Jimbo said aloud the verses he had already learned by heart. While his small voice gave the words, more than a little mixed, a bird high up among the boughs woke from its beauty sleep and sang. The two sounds mingled. But the singing of the bird brought back the scenery of the Vicarage garden, and with it the strange, passionate things the old clergyman had said. The two scenes met in his mind, passed in and out of one another like rings of smoke, interchanged, and finally formed a new picture all their own, where flowers danced upon a carpet of star-dust that glittered in mid-air. He knew some sudden, deep enchantment of the spirit. The Fairyland the world had lost spread all about him, and--he had the children close. The imaginative faculty that for years had invented ingenious patents, woke in force, and ran headlong down far sweeter channels--channels that fastened mind, heart, and soul together in a single intricate network of soft belief. He remembered the dusk upon the Crayfield lawns. 'Of course I know a Star Cave,' he said at length, when Jimbo had finished his recitation, and Monkey had added the details their father had told them. 'I know the very one your Daddy spoke about. It's not far from where we're sitting. It's over there.' He pointed up to the mountain heights behind them, but Jimbo guided his hand in the right direction--towards the Boudry slopes where the forests dip upon the precipices of the Areuse. 'Yes, that's it--exactly,' he said, accepting the correction instantly; 'only _I_ go to the top of the mountains first so as to slide down with the river of starlight.' 'We go straight,' they told him in one breath. 'Because you've got more star-stuff in your eyes than I have, and find the way better,' he explained.