After such a nocturnal reconnoitre it is hard to get back to earth, and to believe that the consciousness of such majestic speeding is derived from a tiny human frame.
Suddenly an unexpected series of sounds began to be heard in this place up against the sky.

They had a clearness which was to be found nowhere in the wind, and a sequence which was to be found nowhere in nature.

They were the notes of Farmer Oak's flute.
The tune was not floating unhindered into the open air: it seemed muffled in some way, and was altogether too curtailed in power to spread high or wide.

It came from the direction of a small dark object under the plantation hedge--a shepherd's hut--now presenting an outline to which an uninitiated person might have been puzzled to attach either meaning or use.
The image as a whole was that of a small Noah's Ark on a small Ararat, allowing the traditionary outlines and general form of the Ark which are followed by toy-makers--and by these means are established in men's imaginations among their firmest, because earliest impressions--to pass as an approximate pattern.

The hut stood on little wheels, which raised its floor about a foot from the ground.