meet for that this was a little thing for the gods to permit not knowing that the gods of the Lands of Dream have little power upon the fields we know.  Then she went in through the doorway.  And having exchanged for my own clothes again the raiment that the chamberlain had given me I turned from the hospitality of mighty Singanee and set my face towards the fields we know.  I crossed that enormous tusk that had been the end of Perdondaris and met the artists carving it as I went; and some by way of greeting as I passed extolled Singanee, and in answer I gave honour to his name.  Daylight had not yet penetrated wholly to the bottom of the abyss but the darkness was giving place to a purple haze and I could faintly see one golden dragon there.  Then looking once towards the ivory palace, and seeing no one at the windows, I turned sorrowfully away, and going by the way that I knew passed through the gap in the mountains and down their slopes till I came again in sight of the witch’s cottage.  And as I went to the upper window to look for the fields we know, the witch spoke to me; but I was cross, as one newly waked from sleep, and I would not answer her.  Then the cat questioned me as to whom I had met, and I answered him that in the fields we know cats kept their place and did not speak to man.  And then I came downstairs and walked straight out of the door, heading for Go-by Street.  “You are going the wrong way,” the witch called through the window; and indeed I had sooner gone back to the ivory palace again, but I had no right to trespass any further on the hospitality of Singanee and one cannot stay always in the Lands of Dream, and what knowledge had that old witch of the call of the fields we know or the little though many snares that bind our feet therein?  So I paid no heed to her, but kept on, and came to Go-by Street.  I saw the house with the green door some way up the street but thinking that the near end of the street was closer to the Embankment where I had left my boat I tried the first door I came to, a cottage thatched like the rest, with little golden spires along the roof-ridge, and strange birds sitting there and preening marvellous feathers.  The door opened, and to my surprise I found myself in what seemed like a shepherd’s cottage; a man who was sitting on a log of wood in a little low dark room said something to me in an alien language.  I muttered something and hurried through to the street.  The house was thatched in front as well as behind.  There were not golden spires in front, no marvellous birds; but there was no pavement.  There was a row of houses, byres, and barns but no other sign of a town.  Far off I saw one or two little villages.  Yet there was the river—­and no doubt the Thames, for it was the width of the Thames and had the curves of it, if you can imagine the Thames in that particular spot without a city around it, without any bridges, and the Embankment fallen in.  I saw that there had happened to me permanently and in the light of day some such thing as happens to a man, but to a child more often, when he awakes before morning in some strange room and sees a high, grey window where the door ought to be and unfamiliar objects in wrong places and though knowing where he is yet knows not how it can be that the place should look like that.