And when it happened he never called for
help, because the occurrence simply took his voice away. "It comes from the Nightmare Passage," he decided; "but it's _not_ a
nightmare." It puzzled him. Sometimes, moreover, it came more than once in a single night. He was
pretty sure--not _quite_ positive--that it occupied his room as soon
as he was properly asleep. It took possession, sitting perhaps before
the dying fire, standing upright behind the heavy curtains, or even
lying down in the empty bed his brother used when he was home from
school. Perhaps it played the curtain game, perhaps it poked the coals;
it knew, at any rate, where the eleventh dog had lain concealed. It
certainly came in and out; certainly, too, it did not wish to be seen. For, more than once, on waking suddenly in the midnight blackness, Tim
knew it was standing close beside his bed and bending over him. He
felt, rather than heard, its presence. It glided quietly away. It moved
with marvellous softness, yet he was positive it moved. He felt the
difference, so to speak. It had been near him, now it was gone. It came
back, too--just as he was falling into sleep again. Its midnight coming
and going, however, stood out sharply different from its first shy,
tentative approach. For in the firelight it came alone; whereas in the
black and silent hours, it had with it--others. And it was then he made up his mind that its swift and quiet movements
were due to the fact that it had wings. It flew. And the others that
came with it in the darkness were "its little ones." He also made up
his mind that all were friendly, comforting, protective, and that while
positively _not_ a Nightmare, it yet came somehow along the Nightmare
Passage before it reached him. "You see, it's like this," he explained
to the nurse: "The big one comes to visit me alone, but it only brings
its little ones when I'm _quite_ asleep." "Then the quicker you get to sleep the better, isn't it, Master Tim?" He replied: "Rather! I always do. Only I wonder where they come
_from_!" He spoke, however, as though he had an inkling. But the nurse was so dull about it that he gave her up and tried his
father. "Of course," replied this busy but affectionate parent; "it's
either nobody at all, or else it's Sleep coming to carry you away to
the land of dreams." He made the statement kindly but somewhat briskly,
for he was worried just then about the extra taxes on his land, and
the effort to fix his mind on Tim's fanciful world was beyond him at
the moment. He lifted the boy on to his knee, kissed and patted him as
though he were a favourite dog, and planted him on the rug again with a
flying sweep. "Run and ask your mother," he added; "she knows all that
kind of thing. Then come back and tell me all about it--another time." Tim found his mother in an arm-chair before the fire of another room;
she was knitting and reading at the same time--a wonderful thing the
boy could never understand. She raised her head as he came in, pushed
her glasses on to her forehead, and held her arms out. He told her
everything, ending up with what his father said. "You see, it's _not_ Jackman, or Thompson, or any one like that," he
exclaimed. "It's some one real." "But nice," she assured him, "some one who comes to take care of you
and see that you're all safe and cosy." "Oh, yes, I know that. But----"

"I think your father's right," she added quickly. "It's Sleep, I'm
sure, who pops in round the door like that. Sleep _has_ got wings, I've
always heard." "Then the other thing--the little ones?" he asked. "Are they just sorts
of dozes, you think?" Mother did not answer for a moment. She turned down the page of her
book, closed it slowly, put it on the table beside her. More slowly
still she put her knitting away, arranging the wool and needles with
some deliberation. "Perhaps," she said, drawing the boy closer to her and looking into his
big eyes of wonder, "they're dreams!" Tim felt a thrill run through him as she said it. He stepped back a
foot or so and clapped his hands softly. "Dreams!" he whispered with
enthusiasm and belief; "of course! I never thought of that." His mother, having proved her sagacity, then made a mistake. She noted
her success, but instead of leaving it there, she elaborated and
explained. As Tim expressed it she "went on about it." Therefore he did
not listen. He followed his train of thought alone. And presently, he
interrupted her long sentences with a conclusion of his own:

"Then I know where She hides," he announced with a touch of awe. "Where
She lives, I mean." And without waiting to be asked, he imparted the
information: "It's in the Other Wing." "Ah!" said his mother, taken by surprise. "How clever of you,
Tim!" --and thus confirmed it. Thenceforward this was established in his life--that Sleep and her
attendant Dreams hid during the daytime in that unused portion of the
great Elizabethan mansion called the Other Wing. This other wing was
unoccupied, its corridors untrodden, its windows shuttered and its
rooms all closed. At various places green baize doors led into it, but
no one ever opened them. For many years this part had been shut up; and
for the children, properly speaking, it was out of bounds. They never
mentioned it as a possible place, at any rate; in hide-and-seek it was
not considered, even; there was a hint of the inaccessible about the
Other Wing. Shadows, dust, and silence had it to themselves. But Tim, having ideas of his own about everything, possessed special
information about the Other Wing. He believed it _was_ inhabited. Who
occupied the immense series of empty rooms, who trod the spacious
corridors, who passed to and fro behind the shuttered windows, he had
not known exactly. He had called these occupants "they," and the most
important among them was "The Ruler." The Ruler of the Other Wing was a
kind of deity, powerful, far away, ever present yet never seen. And about this Ruler he had a wonderful conception for a little boy;
he connected her, somehow, with deep thoughts of his own, the deepest
of all. When he made up adventures to the moon, to the stars, or to
the bottom of the sea, adventures that he lived inside himself, as it
were--to reach them he must invariably pass through the chambers of
the Other Wing. Those corridors and halls, the Nightmare Passage among
them, lay along the route; they were the first stage of the journey. Once the green baize doors swung to behind him and the long dim passage
stretched ahead, he was well on his way into the adventure of the
moment; the Nightmare Passage once passed, he was safe from capture;
but once the shutters of a window had been flung open, he was free of
the gigantic world that lay beyond. For then light poured in and he
could see his way. The conception, for a child, was curious. It established a
correspondence between the mysterious chambers of the Other Wing and
the occupied, but unguessed chambers of his Inner Being.