At first he felt awed, standing motionless just inside the door;
but presently, recovering equilibrium, he moved cautiously on tiptoe
towards the gigantic desk where important papers were piled in untidy
patches. These he did not touch; but beside them his quick eye noted
the jagged piece of iron shell his father brought home from his Crimean
campaign and now used as a letter-weight. It was difficult to lift,
however. He climbed into the comfortable chair and swung round and
round. It was a swivel-chair, and he sank down among the cushions
in it, staring at the strange things on the great desk before him,
as if fascinated. Next he turned away and saw the stick-rack in the
corner--this, he knew, he was allowed to touch. He had played with
these sticks before. There were twenty, perhaps, all told, with curious
carved handles, brought from every corner of the world; many of them
cut by his father's own hand in queer and distant places. And, among
them, Tim fixed his eye upon a cane with an ivory handle, a slender,
polished cane that he had always coveted tremendously. It was the kind
he meant to use when he was a man. It bent, it quivered, and when he
swished it through the air it trembled like a riding-whip, and made
a whistling noise. Yet it was very strong in spite of its elastic
qualities. A family treasure, it was also an old-fashioned relic; it
had been his grandfather's walking stick. Something of another century
clung visibly about it still. It had dignity and grace and leisure in
its very aspect. And it suddenly occurred to him: "How grandpapa must
miss it! Wouldn't he just love to have it back again!" How it happened exactly, Tim did not know, but a few minutes later he
found himself walking about the deserted halls and passages of the
house with the air of an elderly gentleman of a hundred years ago,
proud as a courtier, flourishing the stick like an Eighteenth Century
dandy in the Mall. That the cane reached to his shoulder made no
difference; he held it accordingly, swaggering on his way. He was off
upon an adventure. He dived down through the byways of the Other Wing,
inside himself, as though the stick transported him to the days of the
old gentleman who had used it in another century. It may seem strange to those who dwell in smaller houses, but in this
rambling Elizabethan mansion there were whole sections that, even to
Tim, were strange and unfamiliar. In his mind the map of the Other
Wing was clearer by far than the geography of the part he travelled
daily. He came to passages and dim-lit halls, long corridors of stone
beyond the Picture Gallery; narrow, wainscoted connecting-channels with
four steps down and a little later two steps up; deserted chambers
with arches guarding them--all hung with the soft March twilight and
all bewilderingly unrecognised. With a sense of adventure born of
naughtiness he went carelessly along, farther and farther into the
heart of this unfamiliar country, swinging the cane, one thumb stuck
into the arm-pit of his blue serge suit, whistling softly to himself,
excited yet keenly on the alert--and suddenly found himself opposite a
door that checked all further advance. It was a green baize door. And
it was swinging. He stopped abruptly, facing it. He stared, he gripped his cane more
tightly, he held his breath. "The Other Wing!" he gasped in a swallowed
whisper. It was an entrance, but an entrance he had never seen before. He thought he knew every door by heart; but this one was new. He stood
motionless for several minutes, watching it; the door had two halves,
but one half only was swinging, each swing shorter than the one before;
he heard the little puffs of air it made; it settled finally, the last
movements very short and rapid; it stopped. And the boy's heart, after
similar rapid strokes, stopped also--for a moment. "Some one's just gone through," he gulped. And even as he said it he
knew who the some one was. The conviction just dropped into him. "It's
Grandfather; he knows I've got his stick. He wants it!" On the heels of
this flashed instantly another amazing certainty. "He sleeps in there. He's having dreams. That's what being dead means." His first impulse, then, took the form of, "I must let Father know;
it'll make him burst for joy"; but his second was for himself--to
finish his adventure. And it was this, naturally enough, that gained
the day. He could tell his father later. His first duty was plainly to
go through the door into the Other Wing. He must give the stick back to
its owner. He must _hand_ it back. The test of will and character came now. Tim had imagination, and so
knew the meaning of fear; but there was nothing craven in him. He
could howl and scream and stamp like any other person of his age when
the occasion called for such behaviour, but such occasions were due
to temper roused by a thwarted will, and the histrionics were half
"pretended" to produce a calculated effect. There was no one to thwart
his will at present. He also knew how to be afraid of Nothing, to be
afraid without ostensible cause, that is--which was merely "nerves." He
could have "the shudders" with the best of them. But, when a real thing faced him, Tim's character emerged to meet it. He would clench his hands, brace his muscles, set his teeth--and wish
to heaven he was bigger. But he would not flinch. Being imaginative,
he lived the worst a dozen times before it happened, yet in the final
crash he stood up like a man. He had that highest pluck--the courage
of a sensitive temperament. And at this particular juncture, somewhat
ticklish for a boy of eight or nine, it did not fail him. He lifted the
cane and pushed the swinging door wide open. Then he walked through
it--into the Other Wing. 3

The green baize door swung to behind him; he was even sufficiently
master of himself to turn and close it with a steady hand, because he
did not care to hear the series of muffled thuds its lessening swings
would cause. But he realised clearly his position, knew he was doing a
tremendous thing. Holding the cane between fingers very tightly clenched, he advanced
bravely along the corridor that stretched before him. And all fear left
him from that moment, replaced, it seemed, by a mild and exquisite
surprise. His footsteps made no sound, he walked on air; instead of
darkness, or the twilight he expected, a diffused and gentle light that
seemed like the silver on the lawn when a half-moon sails a cloudless
sky, lay everywhere. He knew his way, moreover, knew exactly where he
was and whither he was going. The corridor was as familiar to him as
the floor of his own bedroom; he recognised the shape and length of
it; it agreed exactly with the map he had constructed long ago. Though
he had never, to the best of his knowledge, entered it before, he knew
with intimacy its every detail. And thus the surprise he felt was mild and far from disconcerting. "I'm here again!" was the kind of thought he had.