early, early, early, while all the townspeople were fast asleep, she ran up the turret-steps and looked out over the field, and at the other side of the field there was a green, ferny ditch and a rose-thorny hedge, and then came the wood. and as sabrinetta stood on her tower she saw a shaking and a twisting of the rose-thorny hedge, and then something very bright and shining wriggled out through it into the ferny ditch and back again. it only came out for a minute, but she saw it quite plainly, and she said to herself: "dear me, what a curious, shiny, bright-looking creature! if it were bigger, and if i didn't know that there have been no fabulous monsters for quite a long time now, i should almost think it was a dragon."