At length I came in sight of the keeper’s farm; and just at that moment the moon peeped from behind a hill, throwing as long shadows as the setting sun, but in the other direction. The shadows were very different too. Somehow they were liker to the light that made them than the sun-shadows are to the sunlight. Both the light and the shadows of the moon were strange and fearful to me. The sunlight and its shadows are all so strong and so real and so friendly, you seem to know all about them; they belong to your house, and they sweep all fear and dismay out of honest people’s hearts. But with the moon and its shadows it is very different indeed. The fact is, the moon is trying to do what she cannot do. She is trying to dispel a great sun-shadow--for the night is just the gathering into one mass of all the shadows of the sun. She is not able for this, for her light is not her own; it is second-hand from the sun himself; and her shadows therefore also are second-hand shadows, pieces cut out of the great sun-shadow, and coloured a little with the moon’s yellowness. If I were writing for grown people I should tell them that those who understand things because they think about them, and ask God to teach them, walk in the sunlight; and others, who take things because other people tell them so, are always walking in the strange moonlight, and are subject to no end of stumbles and terrors, for they hardly know light from darkness. Well, at first, the moon frightened me a little--she looked so knowing, and yet all she said round about me was so strange. But I rode quietly up to the back of the yard where the ricks stood, got off Missy and fastened the bridle to the gate, and walked across to the cart-shed, where the moon was shining upon the ladder leading up to the loft. I climbed the ladder, and after several failures succeeded in finding how the door was fastened. When I opened it, the moonlight got in before me, and poured all at once upon a heap of straw in the farthest corner, where Jamie was lying asleep with a rug over him. I crossed the floor, knelt down by him, and tried to wake him. This was not so easy. He was far too sound asleep to be troubled by the rats; for sleep is an armour--yes, a castle--against many enemies. I got hold of one of his hands, and in lifting it to pull him up found a cord tied to his wrist. I was indignant: they had actually manacled him like a thief! I gave the cord a great tug of anger, pulled out my knife, and cut it; then, hauling Jamie up, got him half-awake at last. He stared with fright first, and then began to cry. As soon as he was awake enough to know me, he stopped crying but not staring, and his eyes seemed to have nothing better than moonlight in them. “Come along, Jamie,” I said. “I’m come to take you home.” “I don’t want to go home,” said Jamie. “I want to go to sleep again.”