Stephen began to dream again. This time he dreamt that hills walked and the sky wept. Trees came and spoke to him and told him their secrets and also whether or not he might regard them as friends or enemies. Important destinies were hidden inside pebbles and crumpled leaves. He dreamt that everything in the world – stones and rivers, leaves and fire – had a purpose which it was determined to carry out with the utmost rigour, but he also understood that it was possible sometimes to persuade things to a different purpose.

When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant.

“This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?” he said.

“My kingdoms?” exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. “Oh, no! This is Scotland!”

The gentleman disappeared suddenly – and reappeared a moment later with an armful of tools. There was an axe and a spit and three things Stephen had never seen before. One was a little like a hoe, one was a little like a spade and the last was a very strange object, something between a spade and a scythe. He handed all of them to Stephen, who examined them with a puzzled air. “Are they new, sir? They shine so brightly.”

“Well, obviously one cannot employ tools of ordinary metal for such a magical undertaking as I am proposing. These are made of a compound of quicksilver and starshine. Now, Stephen, we must look for a patch of ground where the dew has not settled and if we dig there we are sure to find moss-oak!”

All through the glen all the grasses and tiny coloured bog-plants were covered with dew. Stephen’s clothes, hands, hair and skin had a velvety, grey bloom, and the gentleman’s hair – which was always extraordinary – had added the sparkle of a million tiny spheres of water to its customary brilliance. He appeared to be wearing a jewelled halo.

The gentleman walked slowly across the glen, his eyes fixed upon the ground. Stephen followed.

“Ah!” cried the gentleman. “Here we are!”

How the gentleman knew this, Stephen could not tell.

They were standing in the middle of a boggy expanse, exactly like every other part of the glen. There was no distinguishing tree or rock nearby to mark the spot. But the gentleman strode on with a confident air until he came to a shallow depression. In the middle of the depression was a long, broad stripe where there was no dew at all.

“Dig here, Stephen!”

The gentleman proved surprizingly knowledgeable about the art of peat cutting. And though he did none of the actual work himself he carefully instructed Stephen how to cut away the uppermost layer of grasses and moss with one tool, how to cut the peat with another tool and how to lift out the pieces with a third.