“Into what is to be,--out of Shadow-Land into what is to come, but is not yet.” “I do not understand you.” “You will know when the time comes. I crushed the flowers because they were part of what is to come; they had no right here.” Nothing more was said; but Aster seemed restless and uneasy until they left the place where the violets had bloomed. Yet nothing disturbed them, and on they went, till Eva began to wonder where the stones could be of which the voice had said, “Beware!” At last, when there was only a tiny crescent of the moon, like a faint silver line, floating in the sky, and Aster’s figure, like it, was once more reduced to its smallest dimensions, the forest through which they had wandered for so long ended; and as they passed from it, a low cry of surprise from Aster made Eva look down, as she saw that his eyes were fixed upon the earth; and then she saw with equal surprise that, while she walked along the rough, stony path without leaving any impression, every step that Aster took left a deep, plain track, and that in each of these tracks there was either a frog or a spider, which would disappear while she looked at them. Then a sudden turn in the path brought them to a place where a huge pile of rocks, like an immense stone wall built by giants, rose up before them. A faint breath of violets seemed to come, and then pass away, and as it did, Eva knew that these were the stones of which she had been warned. At that very moment there was a flash of light, and a star fell from the sky, near the moon. “A falling star, how pretty it is!” Eva said, as she watched the bright thing, which seemed to fall behind the stone wall. “Did you see it, Aster?” “You don’t know anything, Eva,” was his reply. “I told you once before that everything which was lost in the moon fell into Shadow-Land, and that was something bright which fell just now.” But this had nothing to do with the wall, which must be climbed. How, Eva did not know. She was almost afraid to try it; and so she stood, looking at it, when Aster, who, ever since he had crushed the violets, had followed her in silence, except when he had spoken of the shooting star, with his eyes bent on the ground, suddenly ran forward to the wall, and began to look eagerly into every crevice between the stones. “What are you looking for?” Eva asked him. “Come back to me, Aster; it is not safe for you there without me.” “I will look,” Aster said. “The bright thing you called a star was my flower. It is here, and I am going to find it.” “Don’t!” Eva said, imploringly, as the boy tried to creep into one of the crevices between the stones. “Remember Aster, that the moon is nearly gone, and if she should disappear, you will go to sleep, and then you will have to stay in there until she returns.”