to apply to profound students and great thinkers and sages. No, Digory. Men like me, who 
possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common 
pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a high and lonely destiny."
    
    As he said this he sighed and looked so grave and noble and mysterious that for a 
second Digory really thought he was saying something rather fine. But then he remembered 
the ugly look he had seen on his Uncle's face the moment before Polly had vanished: and 
all at once he saw through Uncle Andrew's grand words. "All it means," he said to 
himself, "Is that he thinks he can do anything he likes to get anything he wants."
    
    "Of course," said Uncle Andrew, "I didn't dare to open the box for a long time, for I 
knew it might contain something highly dangerous. For my godmother was a very remarkable 
woman. The truth is, she was one of the last mortals in this country who had fairy blood 
in her. (She said there had been two others in her time. One was a duchess and the other 
was a charwoman.) In fact, Digory, you are now talking to the last man (possibly) who 
really had a fairy godmother. There! That'll be something for you to remember when you 
are an old man yourself."
    
    "I bet she was a bad fairy," thought Digory; and added out loud. "But what about 
Polly?"
    
    "How you do harp on that!" said Uncle Andrew. "As if that was what mattered! My first 
task was of course to study the box itself. It was very ancient. And I knew enough even 
then to know that it wasn't Greek, or Old Egyptian, or Babylonian, or Hittite, or 
Chinese. It was older than any of those nations. Ah-that was a great day when I at last 
found out the truth. The box was Atlantean; it came from the lost island of Atlantis. 
That meant it was centuries older than any of the stone-age things they dig up in Europe. 
And it wasn't a rough, crude thing like them either. For in the very dawn of time 
Atlantis was already a great city with palaces and temples and learned men."
    
    He paused for a moment as if he expected Digory to say something. But Digory was 
disliking his Uncle more every minute, so he said nothing.
    
    "Meanwhile," continued Uncle Andrew, "I was learning a good deal in other ways (it 
wouldn't be proper to explain them to a child) about Magic in general. That meant that I 
came to have a fair idea what sort of things might be in the box. By various tests I 
narrowed down the possibilities. I had to get to know some-well, some devilish queer 
people, and go through some very disagreeable experiences. That was what turned my head 
grey. One doesn't become a magician for nothing. My health broke down in the end. But I 
got better. And at last I actually knew."
    
    Although there was not really the least chance of anyone overhearing them, he leaned 
forward and almost whispered as he said:
    
    "The Atlantean box contained something that had been brought from another world when 
our world was only just beginning."
    
    "What?" asked Digory, who was now interested in spite of himself.
    
    "Only dust," said Uncle Andrew. "Fine, dry dust. Nothing much to look at. Not much to 
show for a lifetime of toil, you might say. Ah, but when I looked at that dust (I took 
jolly good care not to touch it) and thought that every grain had once been in another 
world-I don't mean another planet, you know; they're part of our world and you could get 
to them if you went far enough-but a really Other World-another Nature another 
universe-somewhere you would never reach even if you travelled through the space of this 
universe for ever and ever-a world that could be reached only by Magic-well!" Here Uncle 
Andrew rubbed his hands till his knuckles cracked like fireworks.
    
    "I knew," he went on, "that if only you could get it into the right form, that dust 
would draw you back to the place it had come from. But the difficulty was to get it into 
the right form. My earlier experiments were all failures. I tried them on guinea-pigs. 
Some of them only died. Some exploded like little bombs-"
    
    "It was a jolly cruel thing to do," said Digory who had once had a guinea-pig of his 
own.
    
    "How you do keep getting off the point!" said Uncle Andrew. "That's what the 
creatures were for. I'd bought them myself. Let me see-where was I? Ah yes. At last I 
succeeded in making the rings: the yellow rings. But now a new difficulty arose. I was 
pretty sure, now, that a yellow ring would send any creature that touched it into the 
Other Pace. But what would be the good of that if I couldn't get them back to tell me 
what they had found there?"
    
    "And what about them?" said Digory. "A nice mess they'd be in if they couldn't get 
back!"
    
    "You will keep on looking at everything from the wrong point of view," said Uncle 
Andrew with a look of impatience. "Can't you understand that the thing is a great 
experiment? The whole point of sending anyone into the Other Place is that I want to find 
out what it's like."
    
    "Well why didn't you go yourself then?"
    
    Digory had hardly ever seen anyone so surprised and offended as his Uncle did at this 
simple question. "Me? Me?" he exclaimed. "The boy must be mad! A man at my time of life, 
and in my state of health, to risk the shock and the dangers of being flung suddenly into 
a different universe? I never heard anything so preposterous in my life! Do you realize 
what you're saying? Think what Another World means-you might meet anything anything."
    
    "And I suppose you've sent Polly into it then," said Digory. His cheeks were flaming 
with anger now. "And all I can say," he added, "even if you are my Uncle-is that you've 
behaved like a coward, sending a girl to a place you're afraid to go to yourself."
    
    "Silence, sir!" said Uncle Andrew, bringing his hand down on the table. "I will not 
be talked to like that by a little, dirty, schoolboy. You don't understand. I am the 
great scholar, the magician, the adept, who is doing the experiment. Of course I need 
subjects to do it on. Bless my soul, you'll be telling me next that I ought to have asked 
the guinea-pigs' permission before I used them! No great wisdom can be reached without 
sacrifice. But the idea of my going myself is ridiculous. It's like asking a general to 
fight as a common soldier. Supposing I got killed, what would become of my life's work?"