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Godmother was leaning on the parapet beside her.

“We are facing north now,” she said, and added suddenly, “You’ve been to Hampstead Heath, of course?”

Betty could not imagine what Hampstead Heath had to do with the scene upon which she was gazing, but she said, “Yes, we go nearly every Sunday.”

“Well, then, you have seen a tiny bit that is left of that great forest in front of you. There’s very little ‘forest’ about Hampstead Heath now, certainly, but such as it is, it is the descendant of that very one you see before you, which, a thousand years ago, stretched for hundreds of miles over this island.”

From the other side of the fortress, to which they presently moved, the view was equally strange, for here there was nothing to be seen but swampy land, just emerging from the water which everywhere surrounded it.

“We are looking south,” Godmother said, “and now that you see this great stretch of water right and left, you will understand why the first name of London was the lake fort.”

“Is that what Llyn-din means?” Betty asked.