“I will go to the second bend, up to the white birch. If I do it in a hundred steps I will stop a minute. If I do it in ninety steps I will stop two minutes.” But it was always more than a hundred steps for sand shoes, and so, honourably, though her breathless little body were rocking, she would not stop. She reached the top at last, too hot from walking to flinch at the shock of the wind, or to notice that the sun had gone in: and found her goal again—twin towers and arched body—yet so strangely altered in an afternoon, that, as she looked, she gave a cry of dismay. It had been so near, so clear, a parrot’s flight from Beech Hill, but now, withdrawn to an immense distance, it rose without a glitter from the iron rim of the world, a grey, frozen blur upon the sullen sky. She stared fearfully. She couldn’t ... she hadn’t ... she couldn’t have made a mistake?... Yet what had happened?... What in the name of enchantment had happened to the Crystal Palace, the _Cœlestial City_, the bright and shining heaven?... Enchantment! In a flash her scared wits seized at the only endurable explanation. Enchantment! Of course! Of course! Oh, blessedly of course! What was she thinking of so soon to forget _Christian_, and her _Shepherds_?... _Beware that ye steppe._... How they had rubbed it in too! And she hadn’t come to a single danger yet except motor-cars and the cow with the leering eye; did she suppose she was to win through without a qualm? Foolish Laura, to forget that between _Delectable Mountains_ and the _Gates of the City_ lies, with all its bewilderments, _the Enchanted Ground_. _The Enchanted Ground!_ Her eyes sought the far hills, and once more credulity was fortified into conviction, for even as she watched, the white autumn dusk uprose noiselessly, and before it city and hills alike shrank and were gone. It was as convincing a piece of magic as could be wanted. Laura only wished Aunt Adela could have been there to see it—Aunt Adela, who did not believe in witches—Aunt Adela, always sniffing at _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_! Besides, even Aunt Adela would be—only for a moment—some sort of a companion, flesh and blood at least, at a small girl’s elbow, as she stands lonesomely on a strange hill-top, buttoning the reefer that had seemed so hot and thick down in the valley, pulling down cuffs of sleeves through which the wind is tunnelling, making shivering preparation for the plunge down—down—down—into _Enchanted Ground_.