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“What is?” asked Alice, sulkily.

“Why, we have room to rest, and there’s no hurry for a minute or two. I’m tired.”

“You selfish creature!” said Alice. “If you are tired, what must I be!”

“Tired too,” answered Richard. “But we’ve got on bravely. And look! what’s that?”

By this time the day was gone, and the night so near, that in the shadows of the tree all was dusky and dim. But there was still light enough to discover that in a niche of the tree sat a huge horned owl, with green spectacles on his beak, and a book in one foot. He took no heed of the intruders, but kept muttering to himself. And what do you think the owl was saying? I will tell you. He was talking about the book that he held upside down in his foot.

“Stupid book this-s-s-s! Nothing in it at all! Everything upside down! Stupid ass-s-s-s! Says owls can’t read! I can read backwards!”

“I think that is the goblin again,” said Richard, in a whisper. “However, if you ask a plain question, he must give you a plain answer, for they are not allowed to tell downright lies in Fairyland.”

“Don’t ask him, Richard; you know you gave him a dreadful blow.”

“I gave him what he deserved, and he owes me the same.–Hallo! which is the way out?”

He wouldn’t say if you please, because then it would not have been a plain question.

“Down-stairs,” hissed the owl, without ever lifting his eyes from the book, which all the time he read upside down, so learned was he.

“On your honour, as a respectable old owl?” asked Richard.

“No,” hissed the owl; and Richard was almost sure that he was not really an owl. So he stood staring at him for a few moments, when all at once, without lifting his eyes from the book, the owl said, “I will sing a song,” and began:

“Nobody knows the world but me.
When they’re all in bed, I sit up to see
I’m a better student than students all,
For I never read till the darkness fall;
And I never read without my glasses,
And that is how my wisdom passes.
Howlowlwhoolhoolwoolool.

“I can see the wind. Now who can do that?
I see the dreams that he has in his hat;
I see him snorting them out as he goes–
Out at his stupid old trumpet-nose.
Ten thousand things that you couldn’t think
I write them down with pen and ink.
Howlowlwhooloolwhitit that’s wit.

“You may call it learning–’tis mother-wit.
No one else sees the lady-moon sit
On the sea, her nest, all night, but the owl,
Hatching the boats and the long-legged fowl.
When the oysters gape to sing by rote,
She crams a pearl down each stupid throat.
Howlowlwhitit that’s wit, there’s a fowl!”

And so singing, he threw the book in Richard’s face, spread out his great, silent, soft wings, and sped away into the depths of the tree. When the book struck Richard, he found that it was only a lump of wet moss.

While talking to the owl he had spied a hollow behind one of the branches. Judging this to be the way the owl meant, he went to see, and found a rude, ill-defined staircase going down into the very heart of the trunk. But so large was the tree that this could not have hurt it in the least. Down this stair, then, Richard scrambled as best he could, followed by Alice–not of her own will, she gave him clearly to understand, but because she could do no better. Down, down they went, slipping and falling sometimes, but never very far, because the stair went round and round. It caught Richard when he slipped, and he caught Alice when she did. They had begun to fear that there was no end to the stair, it went round and round so steadily, when, creeping through a crack, they found themselves in a great hall, supported by thousands of pillars of gray stone. Where the little light came from they could not tell. This hall they began to cross in a straight line, hoping to reach one side, and intending to walk along it till they came to some opening. They kept straight by going from pillar to pillar, as they had done before by the trees. Any honest plan will do in Fairyland, if you only stick to it. And no plan will do if you do not stick to it.