Philip used to look out for this house when he was crossing the bridges in London. He scanned carefully the warehouses and factories rising out of the water, in long rows with uncounted windows, that made him wonder what went on behind them. With this material, he said, a magician could make a house like the one he was in search of. Once, when he got home in the evening from London, he was confident that his house lay between Waterloo Bridge and Hungerford Bridge, but next time he was there he was dead against any such suggestion. A factory on the edge of a tract of suburb waste fulfilled his conditions for an hour at another time. He had been thrilled, too, by a photograph shown to him by Mr Stodham--of an ancient palace standing at the foot of a desolate mountain in the remote South. When we were walking together towards the country Philip used to look, as a matter of course, down every side street to right or left, as he always looked up dark alleys in London. Nor was he content to look once down any one street, lest he should miss some transformation or transfiguration. As we began to get clear of London, and houses were fewer and all had long front gardens, and shops ceased, Philip looked ahead now and then as well as from side to side. Beyond the wide, level fields and the tall Lombardy poplars bounding them, there was nothing, but there was room for the house. Fog thickened early in the afternoon over our vacant territories, but we saw only the trees and a Gypsy tent under a hedge. Next day Philip came home feverish from school, and was put to bed in the middle of the pale sunny afternoon. He lay happily stretched out with his eyes fixed on a glass of water near the window. It flickered in the light.... He saw the black river gleaming as when a candle for the first time illuminates a lake in the bowels of a mountain. There was the house beyond the river. Six or seven of its windows were lit up, one large one low down, the rest small, high up, and, except two of them, wide apart. Now and then, at other windows here and there, lights appeared momentarily, like stars uncovered by rapid clouds.... A lofty central door slowly swung open. A tiny figure, as solitary as the first star in the sky, paused at the threshold, to be swallowed up a moment later in darkness. At the same moment Philip awoke with a cry, knowing that the figure was himself.