One morning I sat there, working at a catalogue of them, when he looked in at the door, and said, 'Come.' I laid down my pen and followed him--across the great hall, down a steep rough descent, and along an underground passage to a tower he had lately built, consisting of a stair and a room at the top of it.

The door of this room had a tremendous lock, which he undid with the smallest key I ever saw.
I had scarcely crossed the threshold after him, when, to my eyes, he began to dwindle, and grew less and less.

All at once my vision seemed to come right, and I saw that he was moving swiftly away from me.

In a minute more he was the merest speck in the distance, with the tops of blue mountains beyond him, clear against a sky of paler blue.

I recognised the country, for I had gone there and come again many a time, although I had never known this way to it.
"Many years after, when the tower had long disappeared, I taught one of his descendants what Sir Upward had taught me; and now and then to this day I use your house when I want to go the nearest way home.