be getting back."
    
    "It's only just round the corner," said the Faun, "and there'll be a roaring fire-and 
toast-and sardines-and cake."
    
    "Well, it's very kind of you," said Lucy. "But I shan't be able to stay long."
    
    "If you will take my arm, Daughter of Eve," said Mr Tumnus, "I shall be able to hold 
the umbrella over both of us. That's the way. Now-off we go."
    
    And so Lucy found herself walking through the wood arm in arm with this strange 
creature as if they had known one another all their lives.
    
    They had not gone far before they came to a place where the ground became rough and 
there were rocks all about and little hills up and little hills down. At the bottom of 
one small valley Mr Tumnus turned suddenly aside as if he were going to walk straight 
into an unusually large rock, but at the last moment Lucy found he was leading her into 
the entrance of a cave. As soon as they were inside she found herself blinking in the 
light of a wood fire. Then Mr Tumnus stooped and took a flaming piece of wood out of the 
fire with a neat little pair of tongs, and lit a lamp. "Now we shan't be long," he said, 
and immediately put a kettle on.
    
    Lucy thought she had never been in a nicer place. It was a little, dry, clean cave of 
reddish stone with a carpet on the floor and two little chairs ("one for me and one for a 
friend," said Mr Tumnus) and a table and a dresser and a mantelpiece over the fire and 
above that a picture of an old Faun with a grey beard. In one corner there was a door 
which Lucy thought must lead to Mr Tumnus's bedroom, and on one wall was a shelf full of 
books. Lucy looked at these while he was setting out the tea things. They had titles like 
The Life and Letters of Silenus or Nymphs and Their Ways or Men, Monks and Gamekeepers; a 
Study in Popular Legend or Is Man a Myth?
    
    "Now, Daughter of Eve!" said the Faun.
    
    And really it was a wonderful tea. There was a nice brown egg, lightly boiled, for 
each of them, and then sardines on toast, and then buttered toast, and then toast with 
honey, and then a sugar-topped cake. And when Lucy was tired of eating the Faun began to 
talk. He had wonderful tales to tell of life in the forest. He told about the midnight 
dances and how the Nymphs who lived in the wells and the Dryads who lived in the trees 
came out to dance with the Fauns; about long hunting parties after the milk-white stag 
who could give you wishes if you caught him; about feasting and treasure-seeking with the 
wild Red Dwarfs in deep mines and caverns far beneath the forest floor; and then about 
summer when the woods were green and old Silenus on his fat donkey would come to visit 
them, and sometimes Bacchus himself, and then the streams would run with wine instead of 
water and the whole forest would give itself up to jollification for weeks on end. "Not 
that it isn't always winter now," he added gloomily. Then to cheer himself up he took out 
from its case on the dresser a strange little flute that looked as if it were made of 
straw and began to play. And the tune he played made Lucy want to cry and laugh and dance 
and go to sleep all at the same time. It must have been hours later when she shook 
herself and said:
    
    "Oh, Mr Tumnus-I'm so sorry to stop you, and I do love that tune-but really, I must 
go home. I only meant to stay for a few minutes."
    
    "It's no good now, you know," said the Faun, laying down its flute and shaking its 
head at her very sorrowfully.
    
    "No good?" said Lucy, jumping up and feeling rather frightened. "What do you mean? 
I've got to go home at once. The others will be wondering what has happened to me." But a 
moment later she asked, "Mr Tumnus! Whatever is the matter?" for the Faun's brown eyes 
had filled with tears and then the tears began trickling down its cheeks, and soon they 
were running off the end of its nose; and at last it covered its face with its hands and 
began to howl.
    
    "Mr Tumnus! Mr Tumnus!" said Lucy in great distress. "Don't! Don't! What is the 
matter? Aren' you well? Dear Mr Tumnus, do tell me what is wrong." But the Faun continued 
sobbing as if its heart would break. And even when Lucy went over and put her arms round 
him and lent him her hand kerchief, he did not stop. He merely took the handker chief and 
kept on using it, wringing it out with both hands whenever it got too wet to be any more 
use, so that presently Lucy was standing in a damp patch.
    
    "Mr Tumnus!" bawled Lucy in his ear, shaking him. "Do stop. Stop it at once! You 
ought to be ashamed of yourself, a great big Faun like you. What on earth are you crying 
about?"
    
    "Oh-oh-oh!" sobbed Mr Tumnus, "I'm crying because I'm such a bad Faun."
    
    "I don't think you're a bad Faun at all," said Lucy. "I think you are a very good 
Faun. You are the nicest Faun I've ever met."
    
    "Oh-oh-you wouldn't say that if you knew," replied Mr Tumnus between his sobs. "No, 
I'm a bad Faun. I don't suppose there ever was a worse Faun since the beginning of the 
world."
    
    "But what have you done?" asked Lucy.
    
    "My old father, now," said Mr Tumnus; "that's his picture over the mantelpiece. He 
would never have done a thing like this."
    
    "A thing like what?" said Lucy.
    
    "Like what I've done," said the Faun. "Taken service under the White Witch. That's 
what I am. I'm in the pay of the White Witch."
    
    "The White Witch? Who is she?"
    
    "Why, it is she that has got all Narnia under her thumb. It's she that makes it 
always winter. Always winter and never Christmas; think of that!"
    
    "How awful!" said Lucy. "But what does she pay you for?"