but, on the other hand, there were the leaves. mrs. darling examined them very carefully; they were skeleton leaves, but she was sure they did not come from any tree that grew in england. she crawled about the floor, peering at it with a candle for marks of a strange foot. she rattled the poker up the chimney and tapped the walls. she let down a tape from the window to the pavement, and it was a sheer drop of thirty feet, without so much as a spout to climb up by.