“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. Through these

chambers, through these darkened corridors, along a passage, sometimes

dangerous, or at least of questionable repute, he must pass to find

all adventures that were real.

The light—when he pierced far enough to take the shutters

down—was discovery. Tim did not actually think, much less say, all

this. He was aware of it, however. He felt it. The Other Wing was

inside himself as well as through the green baize doors. His inner ma

of wonder included both of them.

But now, for the first time in his life, he knew who lived there

and who the Ruler was. A shutter had fallen of its own accord; light

poured in; he made a guess, and Mother had confirmed it. Sleep and her

Little Ones, the host of dreams, were the daylight occupants. They

stole out when the darkness fell. All adventures in life began and

ended by a dream—discoverable by first passing through the Other

Wing.