willow; three steps nearer and Gerald saw that it was the pedestal
of a statue empty.

"They come alive," he said; and another white shape came out of
the Temple of Flora and disappeared in the laurels. "The statues
come alive."

There was a crunching of the little stones in the gravel of the drive.
Something enormously long and darkly grey came crawling
towards him, slowly, heavily. The moon came out just in time to
show its shape. It was one of those great lizards that you see at the
Crystal Palace, made in stone, of the same awful size which they
were millions of years ago when they were masters of the world,
before Man was.

"It can't see me," said Gerald. "I am not afraid. It's come to life,
too."

As it writhed past him he reached out a hand and touched the side
of its gigantic tail. It was of stone. It had not "come alive" as he
had fancied, but was alive in its stone. It turned, however, at the
touch; but Gerald also had turned, and was running with all his
speed towards the house. Because at that stony touch Fear had
come into the garden and almost caught him. It was Fear that he
ran from, and not the moving stone beast.

He stood panting under the fifth window; when he had climbed to
the window-ledge by the twisted ivy that clung to the wall, he
looked back over the grey slope there was a splashing at the
fish-pool that had mirrored the stars the shape of the great stone