Happy was now their lot. They had all they wanted: good food in plenty, instead of hunger and thirst; clean raiment, instead of rags and nakedness; and kind teachers, who instructed them day by day as they were able to bear it. There were a multitude of other happy children too in the castle, with whom they lived, and learned, and spent their glad days. Sometimes they played in the castle, and sometimes they ran about in the grounds that were round it, where were all sorts of flowers, and beautiful trees full of singing birds, and green grass, and painted butterflies; and they were as happy as children could be. All over these grounds they might play about as they would: only on one side of them they were forbidden to go. There the garden ended in a wide waste plain, and there seemed to be nothing to tempt children to leave the happy garden to walk in it, especially as the kind Lord of the castle bid them never set foot on it: and yet it was said that some children had wandered into it, and that of these, many had never come back again. For in that desert dwelt the enemies of the Lord of the castle; and there was nothing they loved better than to pounce down upon any children whom he had taken as his own, and carry them off, to be their slaves in the midst of the waste and dreary sands. Many ways too had these enemies by which they enticed children to come on the plain; for as long as they stayed within the boundary, and played only in the happy garden, the evil one could not touch them. Sometimes they would drop gay and shining flowers all about the beginning of the waste, hoping that the children would come across the border to pick them up: and so it was, that if once a child went over, as soon as he had got into his hands the flower for which he had gone, it seemed to fade and wither away; but just beyond him he thought he saw another, brighter and more beautiful; and so, too, often it happened that, throwing down the first, he went on to take the second; and then throwing down the second, he went on to reach a third; until, suddenly, the enemy dashed upon him, and whirled him away with them in a moment.