the mice and birds play unafraid, because no cat can find the way
thither. You can see the Serpentine from that place, and the bronze
shadows under its bridge, but no houses, and no railways, and no signs
of London.

Here the witch made a little fire, and leaned three sticks together over
it; she lighted the fire with her finger-tip and hung over it the little
patent folding cauldron, which she always carried on a chatelaine
swinging from her belt. And she made a charm of daisy-heads, and
spring-smelling grasses, and the roots of unappreciated weeds, and the
mosses that cover the tiny faery cliffs of the Serpentine. Over the
mixture she shook out the contents of one of her little paper packets of
magic. All this she boiled over her fire for many hours, sitting beside
it in the silver darkness, with her knees drawn up and her hands clasped
in front of them. The trees sprang up into the moonlight like dark
fountains from the pools of their own shadows. Little shreds of cloud
flowed wonderfully across the sky. There was no sound except the sound
of the water, like an uncertain player upon a little instrument. The
charm was still unfinished when the dawn passed over London, and the sun
came up, the seed of another day, sown in a rich red soil. The trees of
the Gardens remembered their daylight shadows again, and forgot their
mystery. The water-birds, after examining their shoulder-blades with
minute care for some moments, launched themselves upon a lake of
diamonds. There seemed a veil of mist and bird-song over the world. The
sudden song of the birds was like finding the hearing of one's heart
restored, after long deafness.

The witch anointed her shoulder with the charm, after having first made
a drop of potion out of the bubbles in it. This potion she drank, and
was healed of her wound and her weariness, and of all desires except a