Page:Chesterton - The Club of Queer Trades.djvu/185

Speculation of the House-Agent "Why, up here," cried Basil, and with a bound and a swing he was above our heads, swarming up the gray column of the colossal tree.

"Come up, all of you," he shouted, out of the darkness, with the voice of a school-boy. "Come up. You'll be late for dinner."

The two great elms stood so close together that there was hardly a yard anywhere, and in some places not more than a foot, between them. Thus occasional branches and even bosses and boles formed a series of footholds that almost amounted to a rude natural ladder. They must, I supposed, have been some sport of growth, Siamese twins of vegetation.

Why we did it I cannot think; perhaps, as I have said, the mystery of the waste and dark had brought out and made primary something wholly mystical in Basil's supremacy. But we only felt that there was a giant's staircase going somewhere, perhaps to the stars; and the victorious voice above called to us out of heaven. We hoisted ourselves up after him. 167