himself, and himself is nobody. There is more in it than you can
see now, but not more than you need to see. You have, I fear, got
into this region too soon, but none the less you must get to be at
home in it; for home, as you may or may not know, is the only place
where you can go out and in. There are places you can go into, and
places you can go out of; but the one place, if you do but find it,
where you may go out and in both, is home."

He turned to walk away, and again I saw the librarian. He did not
appear to have changed, only to have taken up his shadow. I know
this seems nonsense, but I cannot help it.

I gazed after him until I saw him no more; but whether distance hid
him, or he disappeared among the heather, I cannot tell.

Could it be that I was dead, I thought, and did not know it? Was
I in what we used to call the world beyond the grave? and must I
wander about seeking my place in it? How was I to find myself at
home? The raven said I must do something: what could I do here?--
And would that make me somebody? for now, alas, I was nobody!

I took the way Mr. Raven had gone, and went slowly after him.
Presently I saw a wood of tall slender pine-trees, and turned toward
it. The odour of it met me on my way, and I made haste to bury
myself in it.

Plunged at length in its twilight glooms, I spied before me
something with a shine, standing between two of the stems. It
had no colour, but was like the translucent trembling of the hot
air that rises, in a radiant summer noon, from the sun-baked ground,