Chapter 6 Chapter Five Footprints in the Dew

During the interval between night and day, the earth sleeps and everything is so peaceful.Only those who get up before dawn can see this scene. After the passenger on the train at night is wrapped in a coat or blanket and sleeps soundly, when he pulls the curtains of the carriage and looks out, he will find the peaceful earth rushing backwards past the earth outside the window. The trees, bushes and other plants were motionless, sleeping without breathing. It was just before daybreak when Tom entered the garden, and all was silent and gray all over the ground.He went downstairs through the hall to the back door leading to the garden at twelve o'clock in the middle of the night, but it was much later when he opened the door and went into the garden to have a look.All night, whether in the bright moonlight or in the veil of night, the garden has always been awake, but now it has dozed off after standing on guard all night.The green gardens are gray and white under the dew cover.Indeed, before the sun rose, all the flowers of the garden were gone, and the air was still.The neatly trimmed trees are also huddled together.A bird began to sing, and at the corner of the lawn, on a tall fir tree, a bunch of strange-shaped feathers broke away from the treetops, as if they were about to fall to the ground, suddenly the bundle of feathers flew into the air, stretching out two wings , flew to a tree in the distance, and it turned out to be an owl.Its disheveled and drowsy appearance tells people that it has not slept all night.

Tom walked on tiptoe around the garden. At first he wandered along the gravel path lined with box trees on either side of the outer circle of the garden, to find out how big it was.Before long, he grew impatient.Walking on a side road, the yew and hazel trees on both sides of the road hug each other and form an arched shade.At the end of the shade was a gray-green glowing triangle that appeared to be an open area.At Tom's feet were last year's leaves, now rotten and limp.He walked forward lightly.He noticed that in the gap of the yew tree on the right, there were sometimes lighter colors than the leaves of the yew tree. As he walked forward, it became dark and bright, and then dark and bright, and then dark...He found that the light color was the back wall of a house, and he was standing behind a row of yew trees, opposite the building, with a lawn in between.

Tom went to the end of the branch road and saw an asparagus field, which he later learned was the kitchen garden.Beside the asparagus fields that rose like graves, there was a dark rectangle that turned out to be a pond.At one end of the pond is an octagonal villa overlooking the pond, with arcades on the ground floor and stone steps leading to the gate of the villa.Now the villa stood there, like the rest of the garden, asleep. After the pond and the villa there is a winding path, on the other side of the path is a wasteland overgrown with weeds, and then there is a bush fence. Tom noticed that the garden was walled on three sides, one of which was the back wall of the building itself.On the south side of the garden there is a high masonry wall, and on the other side the wall is low enough to be climbed over.The easiest thing to get through, though, was the hedgerow.Soon after Tom entered the garden he wondered what it was like outside.He stared wide-eyed and walked along the fence looking for a gap to get out of. All he needed was a small hole, and he could get through it by pulling it open with his hands.He finally found a very narrow opening.To his surprise, the opening did not lead directly to the outside of the garden, but to the middle of the fence.In the middle of the fence is a small passage.About a foot wide and three feet high.Tom crawled along the path. He climbed to the end of the path and found another opening, bigger than the previous one.

He drilled the hole and saw that it was a pasture.There are several cows in the pasture.Some are still sleeping, one has just woken up and is stretching its hind legs to stand up; the other has already begun to eat grass.Seeing Tom suddenly appearing in front of him, the cow stopped grazing and stared at him intently, wondering if he was still in the dream with hay hanging from both sides of the cow's mouth, and a long stream of saliva dripping from the corner of the mouth, in the pre-dawn night. Swaying gently in the breeze. On the other side of the pasture, a long gray goose neck protruded from the grass.Tom saw its head turned to one side, one eye fixed on the fence opening, watching what was going on inside.It was a gander, but Tom wouldn't know it.After a while, the gander's wives all around him stretched out their white necks and looked in Tom's direction.Then the gander stretched its neck, puffed out its chest and spread its beautiful wings, flapping up and down, and the feathers on the wings stood up one by one.The other geese also spread their wings one by one to welcome the coming of a new day.

Tom felt that the time passed quickly, and he couldn't help feeling anxious.He climbed back to the garden the same way.He began to pay attention to the paths, winding paths, avenues, flowers and trees in the garden around him.In the corner of the lawn, there is a fir tree.Towering above the other trees, it was bound with ivy, from which branches stretched out like the arms of a child wrapped in a shawl.The tall south wall, half covered with creepers, had a sundial on top of which was a stone radiant sun, the lower half of which was buried in curling clouds, something Tom thought Dad shaves shaving cream on his chin.On one side of the sundial is a honeysuckle arcade, and below is a door.Tom would have opened the door to have a look, but as soon as he saw the sundial, though the sun was not yet shining on it, he remembered that it was getting late, and had to hurry away.

As he passed the greenhouse, Tom just looked in through the glass windows. There were all kinds of plants in it;He walked around the cucumber rack next to the greenhouse, and in less than a minute he hurried past the dovecote, where fan-tailed pigeons were pacing on the brick floor. Tom went into the kitchen garden next to the asparagus patch, weaving among fruit trees, strawberries and bean stands, under a bird-proof wire fence.It's raspberry gooseberry and small seedless grapes.Next to the gooseberries, there was a row of rhubarb.On each clump of rhubarb was turned upside down an old wooden barrel or jug ​​with a piece of sackcloth on it.There was a white thing caught in the crack of a wooden barrel, which turned out to be a note.The slips of paper were folded and had addresses—if they could be called addresses—in the child's handwriting.The note read: "To Oberon, King of Fairies".Tom didn't bother to talk about fairies or anything like that.Therefore, he quickly left this rhubarb border.

Tom came out of the kitchen garden and out onto the lawn.He saw again the hyacinths in the crescent-shaped flower beds around the lawn.An early bee has already started to get busy among the flowers.The hyacinth reminded him of Aunt Gwen, but by this time he had no complaints against her.Poor aunt, she doesn't know anything about these things, so you can't blame her! At the edge of the lawn Tom stopped suddenly.He found two dark green marks on the dew-wet gray-green lawn. Looking carefully, they turned out to be footprints. Someone must have walked on the lawn, stood there for a while, and then walked away.

When did that person come?It must have been after Tom went into the garden.He thought to himself: "There must be no footprints when I came to the garden, it is absolutely certain." How long has that person been standing?Why stand on the lawn?Presumably he was standing facing the row of yew trees.Think here.Tom was a little flustered: when he walked along the yew tree and saw buildings flickering through the gaps in the trees, someone stood on the opposite lawn, watching Tom's flickering figure.Tom turned his gaze to the building, searching window by window.Could someone be watching him from behind the window?No, no one, he was just thinking wildly.Suddenly there was a noise from the garden.Tom's nerves tensed suddenly.This is the sound of the door opening.He hid immediately, and then walked quietly towards the place where the noise was made.Someone came out from the door under the sundial. It was a man pushing a wheelbarrow.

It took a minute or two before it dawned on Tom that the man must be a gardener.He's not doing anything bad, he's just going about his day's work whistling.Only then did Tom realize that the garden was full of sounds, the singing of the birds, the rustling of the leaves in the morning wind, and the sound of everything on the earth waking up and growing and breathing.The rising sun shines on the whole garden, bringing warmth and life to everything, and sucking up the morning dew that nourishes the garden; the iron needle on the sundial finally casts a shadow, indicating the current time.The day has begun, and Tom is afraid of being caught, because the day does not belong to him.He crossed the lawn again and opened the back door back into the building, to his room—depending on whether his room and bed were still in place.He saw that the decorations in the hall downstairs were exactly the same as those he had seen the night before.The morning sun lit them up so clearly that they looked perfectly real.

Frightened, he quickened his pace.Even so, when he got to the door, he looked back at the footprints on the grass, which were still clearly visible, but the rising sun gradually blurred the outline of the footprints. Tom went into the building, closed the back door, and bolted it.At this time, the surroundings were pitch black, but the sound of the big clock ticking and ticking could be heard.He can recognize the direction by the sound of the bell.He groped in the dark for the umbrella shelf and somehow couldn't find it.So he groped towards the place where the barometer was hung, but there was nothing on the wall.Only then did he realize that the surroundings were empty, all the decorations were gone, only the big clock was still ticking, no matter what time it was, it was always there.

Everything was the same in the hall, and Tom was safely back in his world, and the bed in the room above was still waiting for him.He was not afraid now, but his conscience was condemned.The ticking of the grand clock reminded him that there was no thirteen o'clock on the face of the clock, and that was no excuse for getting out of bed, nor could he forgive himself for being out for only a few minutes anyway.He dared not think how long he had been in the garden, for he had gone there before dawn and returned only at sunrise. He went up to the house and went straight to the kitchen to see what time it was. There was a little clock in the kitchen, ugly as it was, but it was very accurate. He found a match in the kitchen and struck one.He blocked the light with his hand, because he didn't want to turn on the light, for fear of waking up his uncle and aunt.He held out the burning match to the clock, and the hour hand pointed to more than twelve o'clock. It's past twelve! Tom stared blankly at the clock, and the match burned to the fingertips, and he had to throw it away.He was puzzled, but one thing was clear: he had not broken his promise to his uncle. Tom went back to bed on tiptoe lest he should wake up his uncle and aunt who had just fallen asleep. Alan Kitson was still muttering to himself a few minutes ago: "It's one o'clock now, and the big clock is striking like twelve just now, so I'll go upstairs to wake Mrs. Bartholomew and tell I can't stand her going on like this. Don't she think I'm afraid of her!"