a wild and boyish delight tearing through his mind.
'Are we going out then?' he asked, 'out of doors?'
'What's the exact time, the very exact time?' Nixie asked hurriedly, ignoring his question; and though Paul had looked a few minutes before they came in, he had quite forgotten by now. She helped herself to his watch, burrowing under his coat to find it, and peering closely to read the position of the hands.
'Five minutes to twelve!' she exclaimed, addressing Jonah in excited whispers. 'Oh, I say! We must be off at once, or we shall miss the crack altogether. Come on, Uncle, or your life won't be safe a minute.'
'Then what will it be a month, I should like to know?' he laughed as he was swept along through the darkness, not knowing what to say or think.
'The crack! The crack! Quick, or we shall miss it!' cried the children in the same sentence, urging him heavily forward.
'What crack? Where are we going to? What does it all mean?' he asked breathlessly, trying to avoid treading on their toes and the toes of Smoke who flew beside them with tail held swiftly aloft as though to guide them.
They brought him up with a sudden bump just outside the door, and Nixie turned up a serious face to explain, while Jonah waited impatiently in front of them.
'Quick! 'she whispered, 'listen and I'll tell you. We're going to find the crack between Yesterday and To-morrow, and then—slip through it.'
His heart leaped with excitement as he heard.
'Go on,' he cried. 'Tell me more! '
'You see, Yesterday really begins just after Midnight when To-day ends'; she said, 'and Tomorrow begins there too.'
'Of course.'
'After Midnight, To-morrow jumps away again a whole day, and is as far off as ever. That's the nearest you can get to To-morrow.'
'I see.'
'And Yesterday, which has been a whole day away, suddenly jumps up close behind again. So that Yesterday and To-morrow,' she went on, eager with excitement, 'meet at Midnight for a single second before flying off to their new places. Daddy told us that long ago.'
'Exactly. They must.'
'But now the world is old and worn. There's a tiny little crack between Yesterday and To-morrow. They don't join as they once did, and, if we're very quick, we can find the crack and slip through '
'Bless my Timber Limits! 'he exclaimed; 'what a glorious notion!'
'And, once inside there, there's no time, of course,' she went on, more and more hurriedly. 'Anything may happen, and everything come true.'
'The very region 'was thinking about just now! 'thought Paul. 'The very place! I've found it!'
'Do hurry up, oh do ! 'put in Jonah with a loud whisper that echoed down the corridor, for his patience was at length exhausted by all this explanation. 'You are so slow getting started.'
'Ready!' cried Paul and Nixie in the same breath.
They were off! Down the dark and silent stairs on tiptoe, through the empty halls, past the hat-racks and the stuffed deer heads that grinned down upon them from the walls, along the stone passage to the kitchen region, where the row of red fire-buckets gleamed upon the shelves, and so, past the ghostly pantry, to the back door. This they found open, for Jonah had already run ahead and unlocked it. Another minute and they had crossed the yard by the stables, where the pump stood watching them like a figure with an outstretched arm, and soon were well out on to the lawn at the back of the house. The rain had ceased, but the wind caught them here with such tremendous blows and shouting that they could hardly hear themselves speak, and had to keep closely together in a bunch to make their way at all. It was pitch dark and the stars were hidden. Paul stumbled and floundered, treading incessantly on the toes of the more nimble children. Smoke ran like a black shadow, now in front, now behind.
'We're nearly there,' Nixie cried encouragingly, as he made a false step and landed with a crash in the middle of some low laurel bushes. 'But do be more careful, Uncle, please,' she added, helping him out again.
'There's the clock striking!' Jonah called, a little in front of them. 'We're only just in time!'
Paul recovered himself and pulled up beside them under the shadows of the big twin cedars that stood like immense sentries at the end of the lawn. He came rolling in, swaying like a ship in a heavy sea. And, as he did so, the sound of a church bell striking the hour came to their ears through the terrific uproar of the elements, blown this way and that by the wind.
It was midnight striking.
At the same instant he heard a peculiar sharp sound like whistling—the noise wind makes tearing through a narrow opening.
'The crack, the crack!' cried his guides together. 'That's the air rushing. It's coming. Look out!' They seized him by the hands.
'But I shall never get through,' shouted Paul, thinking of his size for the first time.
'Yes you will,' Nixie screamed back at him above the roar. 'Between the sixth and seventh strokes, remember.' The fifth stroke had already sounded. The wind caught it and went shrieking into the sky.
Six! boomed the distant bell through the night. They held his hands in a vice.
There was a sound like an express train tearing through the air. A quick flash of brilliance followed, and a long slit seemed to open suddenly in the sky before them, and then flash past like lightning. Nixie tugged at one hand, and Jonah tugged at the other. Smoke scampered madly past his feet.
A wild rush of wind swept him along, whistling in his ears; there was a breathless and giddy sensation of dropping through empty space that seemed as though it could never end—and then Paul suddenly found himself sitting on a grassy bank beside a river, Nixie and Jonah on either side of him, and Smoke washing his face in front of them as though nothing in the whole world had ever happened to disturb his equanimity. And a bright, soft light, like the light of the sun, shone warmly over everything.
'Only just managed it,' Nixie observed to Jonah. 'He is rather wide, isn't he? '
'Everybody's thin somewhere,' was the reply.
'And the crack is very stretchy'—she added,— luckily.'
Paul drew a long breath and stretched himself.
'Well,' he said, still a little breathless and dizzy, 'such things were never done in my day.' 'But this isn't your day any more,' explained Nixie, her blue eyes popping with laughter and mischief, 'it's your night. And, anyhow, as I told you, there's no time here at all. There's no hurry now.'
CHAPTER XV
The imagination is not a state; it is the human existence itself.
—W. B.
Paul, looking round, felt utterly at peace with himself and the world; at rest, he felt. That was his first sensation in
