sideways to listen, on their guard. Then the leaves opened a little
and the troop ventured nearer. The doors and windows of the silent,
staring house had also opened. From the high nursery windows
especially, queer shapes of shadow flitted down to join the others.
For the sun was far away behind the cedars now, and that Net of
Starlight dropped downwards through the air. So carefully had he woven
it years ago that hardly a mesh was torn....

_'He has come back again...!'_ the whisper ran a second time, and he
looked about him for a place where he could hide.

But there was no place. Escape from the golden net was now
impossible....

Then suddenly, looming against the field that held the Gravel-Pit and
the sleeping rabbits, he saw the outline of the Third Class Railway
Carriage his father bought as a Christmas present, still standing on
the stone supports that were borrowed from a haystack.

That Railway Carriage had filled whole years with joy and wonder. They
had called it the Starlight Express. It had four doors, real lamps in
the roof, windows that opened and shut, and big round buffers. It
started without warning. It went at full speed in a moment. It was
never really still. The footboards were endless and very dangerous.

He saw the carriage with its four compartments still standing there in
the hay field. It looked mysterious, old, and enormous as ever. There
it still stood as in his boyhood days, but stood neglected and unused.

The memory of the thrilling journeys he had made in this Starlight