of the wood. The streets would be as cold as the forest, and never,
never, never, if he starved and froze, was he going back to that house
in the village where he had lived but never belonged. So he went on
until the gray light faded, and the soft rustle of falling leaves
changed to the noise of wind scraping in bare branches. When he was very
cold, and ready to lie down and sleep again to forget, he came quite
suddenly on an opening in the trees. In the dim light he saw a little
garden closed in with a hedge of baby evergreens. The wind was rustling
through the stalks of dead flowers in the garden. But in the middle of
it was a little low house, and the windows and doors were glowing like
new, warm flowers.

Yes, it was a house and a garden away there in the wood, but no path led
to it through the forest, and there was a strangeness about it as about
no house or garden Eric had ever seen.

Although no path led through the wood to the house, a path did run
through the garden to the low door stone. Eric went up it and stood
looking in at the door, which was open.

The glow of the house came from a leaping, jolly fire in a big stone
fire-place, and from half a dozen squat candles set in brackets around
the walls. It was the one lovely room that Eric had ever seen. It was so
large that he knew it must occupy the whole of the little house. But in
spite of all the brightness, the comers were dim and far.

There were two strange people there, or they were strange to Eric
because they were so different from any people he had ever known. One
was a young woman who sat sewing cross-legged on a settle at the side of
the fire-place. About her the strangest thing was her hair. It was not