He looked at the familiar face and frowned as he had frowned at mirrors. "Where do you come from?"

"There." The stranger pointed back to the pathway.

"Where are you going?"

"Why, there again to wait.'

"For what?"

"Another time."

He nodded solemnly, not understanding. Then, looking up, he said, “I love the clouds... the peppermint and ice-cream clouds. . . .

"And tigers, antelopes, cake-frosting clouds?"

"Why, yes. Yes."

The stranger smiled.

He frowned. "You are not like the others; they cannot see the antelopes, the tigers." There was something more, he knew, that must be said, more words. The stranger said them:

"I too have dreamed while others laughed. And long, my son; longer than you. When my own arms reached the top of the fence, when my own mirror was moonlit, and I was young. They laughed, or frowned, at me."

"We are much alike," he said gravely.

"Yes, my son, much alike."

The day had gone; the shadows came out from hiding places and crossed the glen, weaving through the grass.

The stranger spoke softly: "We are the dreamers, my son, the searchers, the builders, the singers of truth. Our ways are not the ways of the world-they are lonely ways. Your days will be lonely and your nights will be long with walking, listening for the song I was whistling today. Always you will wander after it, hoping it will come again. You will follow it through the smouldering heaps of cities, and hear it from a spire or churchbell or the fireburst of a bomb or a gun; or wandering near the seaweed you will hear a note in the waves. Your youth, my son, is past, and the song of the bird as a happy song is past. Others will hear the song as you have heard it in your youth, and they will tell you to follow their questionless ways that you may hear the happy song again. But that cannot be. Smile to them and tell them of the song you hear. Make them understand a dream and truth." He looked toward the woods.

"I must go now."

"Don't go."

The stranger smiled and shook his head. "I must. Some day we'll meet. Some day." And he walked across the glen into the shadows.

Walking back by the path, he knew what it was that had changed; it was not the woods, not the birds or the frogs-as the water laughing near his feet was new water after the old had gone, so was he, a stranger to the youth that had flown. Now the snow was gone, and the child's footprints had melted with it. And tomorrow, the dew would have straightened the grass that was pressed down now.

It was moon time, with the geese-clouds drifting, waiting for the night, and blue mountains turning shadows. The path stretched, opening to the warm windows and his mother's call; but it stretched beyond-it was longer than the world, longer than memory; it followed the beacon path of the moon, followed the stranger and the sad song of the bird that he still could hear, growing farther and farther away.

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