that, there was an interval in which he remembered being dreadfully
restless and miserable, and then there came another sort of picture, when
he was aware that he had come out of doors on a dark raw morning with a
little snow about. It was in a street, or at any rate among houses, and
he felt that there were numbers and numbers of people there too, and that
he was taken up some creaking wooden steps and stood on a sort of
platform, but the only thing he could actually see was a small fire
burning somewhere near him. Someone who had been holding his arm left
hold of it and went towards this fire, and then he said the fright he was
in was worse than at any other part of his dream, and if I had not
wakened him up he didn't know what would have become of him. A curious
dream for a child to have, wasn't it? Well, so much for that. It must
have been later in the year that Frank and I were here, and I was sitting
in the arbour just about sunset. I noticed the sun was going down, and
told Frank to run in and see if tea was ready while I finished a chapter
in the book I was reading. Frank was away longer than I expected, and the
light was going so fast that I had to bend over my book to make it out.
All at once I became conscious that someone was whispering to me inside
the arbour. The only words I could distinguish, or thought I could, were
something like "Pull, pull. I'll push, you pull."

'I started up in something of a fright. The voice--it was little more
than a whisper--sounded so hoarse and angry, and yet as if it came from a
long, long way off--just as it had done in Frank's dream. But, though I
was startled, I had enough courage to look round and try to make out
where the sound came from. And--this sounds very foolish, I know, but
still it is the fact--I made sure that it was strongest when I put my ear
to an old post which was part of the end of the seat. I was so certain of
this that I remember making some marks on the post--as deep as I could
with the scissors out of my work-basket. I don't know why. I wonder, by