"Let me be," said the Child, very uneasily. "I'm in a hurry: it may be my turn to-day.... It is the Dawn rising. This is the hour when the Children who are to be born to-day go down to earth.... You shall see.... Time is drawing the bolts...."
"Who is Time?" asked Tyltyl.
"An old man who comes to call those who are going," said another Child. "He is not so bad; but he won't listen or hear. Beg as they may, if it's not their turn, he pushes back all those who try to go.... Let me be! It may be my turn now!"
Light now hastened towards our little friends in a great state of alarm:
"I was looking for you," she said. "Come quick: it will never do for Time to discover you."
As she spoke these words, she threw her gold cloak around the Children and dragged them to a corner of the hall, where they could see everything, without being seen.
Tyltyl was very glad to be so well protected. He now knew that he who was about to appear possessed so great and tremendous a power that no human strength was capable of resisting him. He was at the same time a deity and an ogre; he bestowed life and he devoured it; he sped through the world so fast that you had no time to see him; he ate and ate, without stopping; he took whatever he touched. In Tyltyl's family, he had already taken Grandad and Granny, the little brothers, the little sisters and the old blackbird! He did not mind what he took: joys and sorrows, winters and summers, all was fish that came to his net!...
Knowing this, our friend was astonished to see everybody in the Kingdom of the Future running so fast to meet him:
"I suppose he doesn't eat anything here," he thought.
There he was! The great doors turned slowly on their hinges. There was a distant music: it was the sounds of the earth. A red and green light penetrated into the hall; and Time appeared on the threshold. He was a tall and very thin old man, so old that his wrinkled face was all grey, like dust. His white beard came down to his knees. In one hand, he carried an enormous scythe; in the other, an hour-glass. Behind him, some way out, on a sea the colour of the Dawn, was a magnificent gold galley, with white sails.