hit in the face, the light was so sudden. And there we were on the
top of the tower, which is flat, and people have cut their names on
it, and a turret at one corner, and a low wall all round, up and
down, like castle battlements. And we looked down and saw the roof
of the church, and the leads, and the churchyard, and our garden,
and the Moat House, and the farm, and Mrs Simpkins's cottage,
looking very small, and other farms looking like toy things out of
boxes, and we saw corn-fields and meadows and pastures. A pasture
is not the same thing as a meadow, whatever you may think. And we
saw the tops of trees and hedges, looking like the map of the
United States, and villages, and a tower that did not look very far
away standing by itself on the top of a hill. Alice pointed to it,
and said--

'What's that?'

'It's not a church,' said Noel, 'because there's no churchyard.
Perhaps it's a tower of mystery that covers the entrance to a
subterranean vault with treasure in it.'

Dicky said, 'Subterranean fiddlestick!' and 'A waterworks, more
likely.'

Alice thought perhaps it was a ruined castle, and the rest of its
crumbling walls were concealed by ivy, the growth of years.

Oswald could not make his mind up what it was, so he said, 'Let's
go and see! We may as well go there as anywhere.'

So we got down out of the church tower and dusted ourselves, and