So they sat down under a great tree and ate and drank. After they had finished their meal Sir Tristram took off some of his armour and lay down on the soft mossy bank. After a time he fell asleep.
George nearly fell asleep too. He felt only half awake, and lay on his back listening to the sighing of the wind in the trees and the twittering of the birds. Sometimes it sounded as if they were talking to one another, and sometimes as if they were laughing. Who ever heard birds laugh?
He felt in his pocket for his knife, as he wanted to try to make a whistle out of a piece of wood as Father did. In one pocket he found nothing and in the other some leaves, which he took out to throw away.
"Why, these must be Tom Tiddler's leaves!" he thought. "Alexander said that I wasn't to throw them away. I'll put one of them in my cap."
He fixed one carefully in the side of his cap, and put the others back in his pocket. Then, all of a sudden, he seemed to hear voices, quite tiny voices, talking high up in the air above him.
"Yes!" said the first voice, "it is a long way to the magician's castle."
George sat up and listened eagerly.
"Nobody has ever found the way there yet," said the second voice.
"That's because they are so stupid," was the reply. "You must follow the sun until it sinks, and then follow it again when it rises, until you arrive."