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THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

IN MEMORY OF MRS. VIRGINIA B. SPORER

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The Hill of Dreams

BOOKS BY ARTHUR MACSEN

THE HOUSE OF SOULS

THE SECRET GLORY

FAR OFF THINGS

THE HILL OF DREAMS

In Preparation THINGS NEAR AND FAR THE THREE IMPOSTORS

NMW YORK: ALFRED • A • KN(

The Hill of Dreams

By Arthur Machen

New York

Alfred • A • Knopf

Mcmxxiii

COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC.

Published, January, 1923

Set up and printed 6i/ the Vail-Ballou Co., BingJiamton, N. Y. Paper ftirniehed »i/ W. F. EtTwrington & Co., New York. Bound by H. Wolff Estate, Nev York.

Cnlleg« Library

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Introduction

In the year 189$ I was at length certain, or al- most certain, that I was a man of letters. I had been, if I may put the matter thus familiarly, for more than twelve years "on the job." In '83 I had written a little book called "The Anatomy of Tobacco," chiefly as a counter-irritant to loneliness and semi-starvation. In '84 I had translated the Heptameron of Margaret of Navarre, while '85 and '86 were devoted to the concoction of "The Chronicle of Clemendy" a volume of medieval tales. Another translation, a version of "Le Moyen de Parvenir" by Beroalde de Ferville — his name is more beautiful than his book — occupied the leisure of my evenings somewhere about '88 and '89, the days being given to the rendering of the "Memoirs of Casnova" (twelve volumes) into the English tongue.

In 1890 I was writing essays and short stories and odds and ends and varieties for papers which have now become ghosts: The Globe, The St. James's Gazette, and The Whirlwind; to say nothing of "smart" tales contributed to an extinct, or almost ex- tinct, family of journals; the "society" papers. In

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'go and 'gi I wrote the "Great God Pan" which was published at the end of 'g^ and made a mild sort of sensation with old ladies, on the press and of it. And in the spring and summer of 'g4 I was busy with "The Three Impostors" which fell somewhat flatly when it was issued in the autumn of 'g$. So, as I say, I began to feel almost convinced towards the end of the year i8g$ that I was in some degree a literary man, that my business lay in the direction of writing books. Consequently, it appeared that I had better go and write one. Fery good: the next question was — what sort of a book should I write? And here, the reception that had been given to "The Three Impostors" helped me greatly. I have said that it was of the flat kind, but beyond this, it was critical. I was told that I was merely a second- rate imitator of Stevenson. This was not quite all the truth, but there was a great deal of truth in it, and I am glad to say that I took my correction in a proper spirit. I resolved to try to amend my ways. I made manly resolutions. As I put it to my old friend, that distinguished American citizen, A. E. Waite: "I will never give anybody a white powder again" And on the whole, I have honoured that vow ever since. I was to start afresh, then, from the beginning, to turn over a new leaf, both as re- gards matter and manner. No more white pow- ders, no more of the calix principis inferorum, no more hanky-panky with the Great God Pan, or the

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Little People or any people of that dubious sort; and — this was the hard part of it — no more of the measured, rounded Stevensonian cadence, which I had learned to use with some faculty and more facility. And so we were getting on; I had at least found out the sort of book that I was not going to write. It merely remained to discover what sort of book I was going to write.

I took this problem out with me on solemn walks in dimmest Bloomsbury, then a region most fit for the contemplations of a meditative man. I had just moved into chambers at 4 Fernlam Buildings, Gray's Inn, and so, by way of Theobald's Road, I had easy access to the old, grave squares where life moved quietly and peaceably as if it were the life of a little country town. Grey square opened into grey square, silent street into silent street; all was decorous and remote from the roar of traffic and the rush of men. But few people ascended the steps of the dim old houses, but few descended them; the local trades- men, all old established, old-fashioned, steady and good, called for orders and purveyed their wares in a sober way; Bloomsbury was silence and repose; and in its grey calm I pursued my anxious studies, and submitted my problems to myself.

The required notion came at last, not from within, nor even from Bloomsbury, but from with- out. I am not quite sure, but almost sure, that the needed hint was discovered in an introduction to

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"Tristram Shandy" written by that most accom- plished man of letters, Mr. Charles Whibley. Mr. Whibley, in classifying Sterne's masterpiece, noted that it might be called a picaresque of the mind, con- trasting it with "Gil Bias" which is a picaresque of the body. This distinction had struck me very much when I read it; and now as I was puzzling my head to find a spring for the book that was to be written, Mr. Whibley's dictum occurred to me, and applying it to another eighteenth century masterpiece, I asked myself why I should not write a "Robinson Crusoe" of the soul. I resolved forthwith that I would do so; I would take the theme of solitude, loneliness, separation from mankind, but, in place of a desert island and a bodily separation, my hero should be isolated in London and find his chief loneliness in the midst of myriads of myriads of men. His should be a solitude of the spirit, and the ocean surrounding him and disassociating him from his kind should be a spiritual deep. And here I found myself, as I thought, on sure ground; for I had had some experience of such things. For two years I had endured terrors of loneliness in my little room in Clarendon road, Notting Hill Gate, and so I was soundly instructed as to the matter of the work. I felt, in short, that I had my notion firmly by the tail; and so at once I set to work.

Not to writing, be it understood, but rather to the daily consideration of my topic; to taking it

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every night to bed with me as a child takes his toy; to putting it on the breakfast table beside my morn- ing tea, again as a child with a new toy is apt to set it down on the cloth beside his plate of bread and butter. The notion (and my faithful bulldog Jug- gernaut} went with me on my dim Bloomsbury walks on grey mornings and wintry darkening after- noons, and when occasionally I went out and dined with a friend, the notion was in my pocket, and every now and then I would take it out, as it were, and glance at it for a moment, to make quite sure that it was safe and still there. Unnoticed, I put a few drops of the notion in the wine and sprinkled it lightly on the meat and found that it improved the aroma and flavor of both enormously; and when- ever I was a little bored or down in the mouth and out of sorts, I took a couple of spoonfuls of the notion and felt better at once.

And then I began to plan it out on paper, and to try to reduce it to some logical form, to think of in- cidents that would show forth the idea to the best advantage, to determine the main course of the story, and now and again to write down "bits" that occurred to me. I proceeded in this manner for some weeks. The precious "notion" had been given me, let us say, toward the end of October, but it was not till early in February that I put pen to paper in dead earnest, and launched with a trembling heart on the first chapter. And then the trouble began.

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For, in the first place, I had vowed myself, it will be remembered, to a change of style. Or rather, I was to abandon the manner in which "The Three Impostors" had been written, which was not my manner but Stevenson's and to get a style, or some- thing like a style, of my own. The gracious round- ing of the sentence, the bright balance of words, the sonorous rise and fall of the cadences were done with; no more of costume; all was to be plain, every- day clothes. But it was a hard struggle. The player in private life does not want to "take the stage" as if he were Charles Surface in bloom-col- ored satin; but, on the other hand, he wants still less to enter a drawing room as if he had a game leg and a club foot: I had a horrible todo with my sen- tences in that first chapter. The old rules were gone, the new ones were yet to learn and most vilely I sweated at the task of learning them. The manu- script of that first chapter was a mass of erasures, corrections, interlineations. But somehow it was done, and, I thought, not so badly, all things con- sidered. And then I started, more hopefully, at the second chapter. And then I was done.

I have said that I had planned the book out on paper, that I had, as it were, drawn it to scale, de- vising and arranging a due succession of incidents and events. And no sooner had I written two lines of that second chapter, according to plan, than I found that the book as planned could not be

Introduction

written at all. My clay model broke Into bits in my hand. It had looked all right in the clay, but in the stone it most certainly would not do. It was a horrible moment.

For three weeks I sat down night after night with blank paper before me. Night after night I began to write that second chapter; night after night I groaned and shut up my desk. Sometimes the night's work amounted to two lines; sometimes to two folios; but it was no good. There was neither life, nor fire, nor movement, nor reality in a word of it. Here was I with one chapter of the book finished and all the rest impossible. But all the same it was going to be done. I was as stubborn in those days as my good bulldog, Juggernaut; and I cannot say more than that.

And here I would say that to the best of my be- lief, I was brought to a dead stop precisely because I had explored the way and laid it out so thoroughly. I have told how I rolled the "notion" up and down and round about in my mind; how I planned and plotted and blew up the rocks and cut away the brushwood and felled the trees, so that there should be no difficulties in the track; and there was the mis- chief of it. For the truth is, that for me at any rate literature is always an exploration. The relish of it, the delight of it are indissolubly bound up with the sense of penetrating into a new world and an un- discovered region, of standing on some minor peak

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in Darien and looking on worlds that no eye has ever seen before. And this must be the sense of the scene as the actual words are written, as the ink flows from the pen — or else there is nothing written that matters two straws. And in the affair of this particular bookt I had taken such pains in explor- ing the ground that when I came to write it, there was nothing left to explore. Here were no miracles, no mysteries, no buried treasures, no un- looked for wonders. Everything was known, every- thing familiar, and all seemed quite devoid of signifi- cance.

Still, that book had got to be written, and was going to be written. And one happy night the whole matter of that famous second chapter was mani- fested to me. As far as I remember, in the original design, Lucian was at this point to be packed of to London to the miseries of the inevitable garret; now it seemed that there were further adventures for him in his native country. I thought of these and wrote them and so got the opportunity of dwelling a little longer among the dear woods and the domed hills and the memorable vales of my native Gwent, of trying once more to set down some faint echoes of the inexpressive song that the beloved land al- ways sang to me and still sings across all the waste of weary years. Then I found somewhere or other, the recipe for the "Roman Chapter," an attempted recreation of the Roman British world of Isca

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Silurum, C 'aerie on-on-Usk, the town where I was born, and soaked myself so thoroughly in the vision of the old golden city — now a little desolate milage — and listened so long in the deep green of Went- wood for the clangour of the marching Legion and for the noise of their trumpets that I grew quite "dithery" as they say in some parts of England. I would go out on my dim Bloomsbury strolls, deep in my dream, and would "come to myself" with a sud- den shock in Lamb's Conduit Street or Mecklen- burgh Square or in the solitudes of Great Coram Street, realizing certainly, that I was not, in actual- ity, in the Garden of Avallaunins or delaying in the Via Nympharum or on the Pons Saturni — it is called Pont Sadwrn to this day — but utterly at a loss to know exactly where I was or what I was doing, with- out the faintest notion of the various positions of north and south, east and west, and not at all clear as to how I was to get home to Gray's Inn and my lunch. And it was in this queer way that the fourth chapter was accomplished. I was somewhat proud of it, and went on gaily through Chapters Five, Six and Seven, and had a month's holiday in Provence, and came back to finish my book, feeling confident and in the best of spirits.

Alas! my pride had a deep fall indeed. I read over those last three chapters and saw suddenly that they were all hopelessly wrong, that they would not do at any price, that I had turned, unperceiving,

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from the straight path by ever so little, and had gone on, getting farther and farther away from the true direction till the way was hopelessly lost. I was in the middle of a black wood and I could not see any path out of it.

There was only one thing to be done. The three condemned chapters went into the drawer and I began over again from the end of Chapter Four. Five and Six were done, and then again I struggled desperately for many weeks, trying to find the last chapter. False tracks again, hopeless efforts, spoilt folios thick about me till by some chance or another, I know not how, the right notion was given me, and I wrote the seventh and last chapter in a couple of nights. Once more the thought of the old land had come to my help; the book was finished. It had oc- cupied from first to last the labour of eighteen months.

Then I began to send the manuscript round to the publishers. The result would have melted the heart of the sourest cynic. To those hard men of business, as they are sometimes called, time was nothing, kindness everything. They wrote me, one after another, long letters in small writing on large quarto paper. They all implored me, as I loved them, not to publish this book because, as they ex- plained, it was so poor and weak and dull that its publication would ruin what little reputation I had gained before.

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One of these good men went farther. A month or two after he had refused "The Hill of Dreams'' on folios of in quarto kindness, I saw amongst the "literary announcements" in some paper a para- graph which interested me deeply. It ran some- thing like this:

"Mr. Blank — the publisher — and Mr. Dash — an eminent man of letters — have got hold of a promis- ing idea for a romance. They propose, so Mr. Blank tells me, to describe the adventures of a lad who lives partly in the life of today and partly in the Roman world of the second century of our era. The plan seems a novel and arresting one and I look forward to reading the book next spring. The collaborators have not yet thought of a title for what should be a striking story"

I chuckled. I knew that lad and whence he came: from Chapter Four of my MS. However, nothing more was heard of him in his revised and improved form. "The Hill of Dreams" was pub- lished in 1907, ten years after it had been finished.

The Hill of Dreams

.... . .. . I •

THERE was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened. But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in fairyland. The holidays were nearly done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out resolved to lose himself, to discover strange hills and prospects that he had never seen before. The air was still, breathless, exhausted after heavy rain, and the clouds looked as if they had been moulded of lead. No breeze blew upon the hill, and down in the well of the valley not a dry leaf stirred, not a bough shook in all the dark January woods.

About a mile from the rectory he had diverged from the main road by an opening that promised mystery and adventure. It was an old neglected lane, little more than a ditch, worn ten feet deep by its winter waters, and shadowed by great un- trimmed hedges, densely woven together. On each side were turbid streams, and here and there a tor- rent of water gushed down the banks, flooding the lane. It was so deep and dark that he could not

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The Hill of Dreams

get a glimpse of the country through which he was passing, but the way went down and down to some unconjectured hollow.

Perhaps he walked two miles between the high walls of the lane before its descent ceased, but he thrilled with the sense of having journeyed very far, all the long way from the known to the un- known. He had come as it were into the bottom of a bowl amongst the hills, and black woods shut out the world. From the road behind him, from the road before him, from the unseen wells beneath the trees, rivulets of waters swelled and streamed down towards the center, to the brook that crossed the lane. Amid the dead and wearied silence of the air, beneath leaden and motionless clouds, it was strange to hear such a tumult of gurgling and rush- ing water, and he stood for a while on the quivering footbridge and watched the rush of dead wood and torn branches and wisps of straw all hurrying madly past him, to plunge into the heaped spume, the barmy froth that had gathered against a fallen tree.

Then he climbed again, and went up between lime- stone rocks, higher and higher, till the noise of waters became indistinct, a faint humming like swarming hives in summer. He walked some dis- tance on level ground, till there was a break in the banks and a stile on which he could lean and look out. He found himself, as he had hoped, afar

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The Hill of Dreams

and forlorn; he had strayed into outland and occult territory. From the eminence of the lane, skirting the brow of a hill, he looked down into deep valleys and dingles, and beyond, across the trees, to remoter country, wild bare hills and dark wooded lands meet- ing the grey still sky. Immediately beneath his feet the ground sloped steep down to the valley, a hillside of close grass patched with dead bracken, and dotted here and there with stunted thorns, and below there were deep oakwoods, all still and silent, and lonely as if no one ever passed that way. The grass and bracken and thorns and woods, all were brown and grey beneath the leaden sky; and as Lucian looked he was amazed, as though he were reading a wonderful story, the meaning of which was a little greater than his understanding. Then, like the hero of a fairy-book, he went on and on, catching now and again glimpses of the amazing country into which he had penetrated, and per- ceiving rather than seeing that as the day waned everything grew more grey and sombre. As he advanced he heard the evening sounds of the farms, the low of the cattle, and the barking of the sheep- dogs; a faint thin noise from far away. It was growing late, and as the shadows blackened he walked faster, till once more the lane began to de- scend, there was a sharp turn, and he found himself, with a good deal of relief, and a little disappoint- ment, on familiar ground. He had nearly de-

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The Hill of Dreams

scribed a circle and knew this end of the lane very well; it was not much more than a mile from home. He walked smartly down the hill; the air was all glimmering and indistinct, transmuting trees and hedges into ghostly shapes, and the walls of the White House farm flickered on the hillside, as if they were moving towards him. Then a change came. First, a little breath of wind brushed with a dry whispering sound through the hedges, the few leaves left on the boughs began to stir, and one or two danced madly, and as the wind freshened and came up from a new quarter, the sapless branches above rattled against one another like bones. The growing breeze seemed to clear the air and lighten it. He was passing the stile where a path led to old Mrs. Gibbon's desolate little cottage, in the middle of the fields, at some distance even from the lane, and he saw the light blue smoke of her chimney rise distinct above the gaunt green-gage trees, against a pale band that was broadening along the horizon. As he passed the stile with his head bent, and his eyes on the ground, something white started out from the black shadow of the hedge, and in the strange twilight, now tinged with a flush from the west, a figure seemed to swim past him and disap- pear. For a moment he wondered who it could be, the light was so flickering and unsteady, so unlike the real atmosphere of day, when he recollected it was only Annie Morgan, old Morgan's daughter at the

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The Hill of Dreams

White House. She was three years older than he, and it annoyed him to find that though she was only fifteen, there had been a dreadful increase in her height since the summer holidays. He had got to the bottom of the hill, and lifting up his eyes, saw the strange changes of the sky. The pale band had broadened into a clear vast space of light, and above, the heavy leaden clouds were breaking apart and driving across the heaven before the wind. He stopped to watch, and looked up at the great mound that jutted out from the hills into mid-valley. It was a natural formation, and always it must have had something of the form of a fort, but its steep- ness had been increased by Roman art, and there were high banks on the summit which Lucian's father had told him were the vallum of the camp, and a deep ditch had been dug to the north to sever it from the hillside. On this summit oaks had grown, queer stunted-looking trees with twisted and contorted trunks, and writhing branches; and these now stood out black against the lighted sky. And then the air changed once more; the flush increased, and a spot like blood appeared in the pond by the gate, and all the clouds were touched with fiery spots and dapples of flame; here and there it looked as if awful furnace doors were being opened.

The wind blew wildly, and it came up through the woods with a noise like a scream, and a great oak by the roadside ground its boughs together

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The Hill of Dreams

with a dismal grating jar. As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of molten brass, and the very road glittered. He was wonder-struck, almost aghast, before the scarlet magic of the after- glow. The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames from heaven were smitten about its walls, and above there was a dark floating cloud, like a fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree showed as black as midnight against the blast of the furnace.

When he got home he heard his mother's voice calling: 'Here's Lucian at last. Mary, Master Lucian has come, you can get the tea ready.' He told a long tale of his adventures, and felt some- what mortified when his father seemed perfectly acquainted with the whole course of the lane, and knew the names of the wild woods through which he had passed in awe.

'You must have gone by the Darren, I sup- pose'— that was all he said. 'Yes, I noticed the sunset; we shall have some stormy weather. I don't expect to see many in church to-morrow.'

There was buttered toast for tea 'because it was holidays.' The red curtains were drawn, and a bright fire was burning, and there was the old fa- miliar furniture, a little shabby, but charming from association. It was much pleasanter than the cold

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and squalid schoolroom ; and much better to be read- ing Chambers' s Journal than learning Euclid; and better to talk to his father and mother than to be answering such remarks as: 'I say, Taylor, I've torn my trousers; how much do you charge for mending?' 'Lucy, dear, come quick and sew this button on my shirt.'

That night the storm woke him, and he groped with his hands amongst the bedclothes, and sat up, shuddering, not knowing where he was. He had seen himself, in a dream, within the Roman fort, working some dark horror, and the furnace doors were opened and a blast of flame from heaven was smitten upon him.

Lucian went slowly, but not discreditably, up the school, gaining prizes now and again, and fall- ing in love more and more with useless reading and unlikely knowledge. He did his elegiacs and iam- bics well enough, but he preferred exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He liked history, but he loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain deserted by the legions, the rare pave- ments riven by frost, Celtic magic still brooding on the wild hills and in the black depths of the forest, the rosy marbles stained with rain, and the walls growing grey. The masters did not encourage these researches; a pure enthusiasm, they felt, should be for cricket and football, the dilettanti might even

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play fives and read Shakespeare without blame, but healthy English boys should have nothing to do with decadent periods. He was once found guilty of recommending Villon to a school-fellow named Barnes. Barnes tried to extract unpleasantness from the text during preparation, and rioted in his place, owing to his incapacity for the language. The matter was a serious one; the headmaster had never heard of Villon, and the culprit gave up the name of his literary admirer without remorse. Hence, sorrow for Lucian, and complete immunity for the miserable illiterate Barnes, who resolved to confine his researches to the Old Testament, a book which the headmaster knew well. As for Lucian, he plodded on, learning his work decently, and some- times doing very creditable Latin and Greek prose. His school-fellows thought him quite mad, and toler- ated him, and indeed were very kind to him in their barbarous manner. He often remembered in after life acts of generosity and good nature done by wretches like Barnes, who had no care for old French nor for curious metres, and such recollections al- ways moved him to emotion. Travellers tell such tales; cast upon cruel shores amongst savage races, they have found no little kindness and warmth of hospitality.

He looked forward to the holidays as joyfully as the rest of them. Barnes and his friend Duscot used to tell him their plans and anticipations; they

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The Hill of Dreams

were going home to brothers and sisters, and to cricket, more cricket, or to football, more football, and in the winter there were parties and jollities of all sorts. In return he would announce his intention of studying the Hebrew language, or perhaps Prov- engal, with a walk up a bare and desolate mountain by way of open-air amusement, and on a rainy day for choice. Whereupon Barnes would impart to Duscot his confident belief that old Taylor was quite cracked. It was a queer, funny life that of school, so very unlike anything in Tom Brown. He once saw the headmaster patting the head of the bishop's little boy, while he called him 'my little man,' and smiled hideously. He told the tale grotesquely in the lower fifth room the same day, and earned much applause, but forfeited all liking directly by propos- ing a voluntary course of scholastic logic. One bar- barian threw him to the ground and another jumped on him, but it was done very pleasantly. There were, indeed, some few of a worse class in the school, solemn sycophants, prigs perfected from tender years, who thought life already 'serious,' and yet, as the headmaster said, were 'joyous, manly young fellows.' Some of these dressed for din- ner at home, and talked of dances when they came back in January. But this virulent sort was comparatively infrequent, and achieved great suc- cess in after life. Taking his school days on the whole, he always spoke up for the system, and years

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The Hill of Dreams

afterwards he described with enthusiasm the strong beer at a roadside tavern, some way out of the town. But he always maintained that the taste for tobacco, acquired in early life, was the great note of the English Public School.

Three years after Lucian's discovery of the nar- row lane and the vision of the flaming fort, the Aug- ust holidays brought him home at a time of great heat. It was one of those memorable years of English weather, when some Provengal spell seems wreathed round the island in the northern sea, and the grasshoppers chirp loudly as the cicadas, the hills smell of rosemary, and white walls of old farm- houses blaze in the sunlight as if they stood in Aries or Avignon or famed Tarascon by Rhone.

Lucian's father was late at the station, and con- sequently Lucian bought the Confessions of an Eng- lish Opium Eater which he saw on the bookstall. When his father did drive up, Lucian noticed that the old trap had had a new coat of dark paint, and that the pony looked advanced in years.

4I was afraid that I should be late, Lucian,' said his father, 'though I made old Polly go like any- thing. I was just going to tell George to put her into the trap when young Philip Harris came to me in a terrible state. He said his father fell down 'all of a sudden like' in the middle of the field, and they couldn't make him speak, and would I please to come and see him. So I had to go, though I

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The Hill of Dreams

couldn't do anything for the poor fellow. They had sent for Dr. Burrows, and I am afraid he will find it a bad case of sunstroke. The old people say they never remember such a heat before.'

The pony jogged steadily along the burning turn- pike road, taking revenge for the hurrying on the way to the station. The hedges were white with the limestone dust, and the vapour of heat palpi- tated over the fields. Lucian showed his Confes- sions to his father, and began to talk of the beauti- ful bits he had already found. Mr. Taylor knew the book well — had read it many years before. In- deed he was almost as difficult to surprise as that character in Daudet, who had one formula for all the chances of life, and when he saw the drowned Academician dragged out of the river, merely ob- served 'J'ai vu tout qa' Mr. Taylor the parson, as his parishioners called him, had read the fine books and loved the hills and woods, and now knew no more of pleasant or sensational surprises. Indeed the living was much depreciated in value, and his own private means were reduced almost to vanish- ing point, and under such circumstances the great style loses many of its finer savours. He was very fond of Lucian, and cheered by his return, but in the evening he would be a sad man again, with his head resting on one hand, and eyes reproaching sorry fortune.

Nobody called out 'Here's your master with

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Master Lucian: you can get tea ready,' when the pony jogged up to the front door. His mother had been dead a year, and a cousin kept house. She was a respectable person called Deacon, of middle age, and ordinary standards; and, consequently, there was cold mutton on the table. There was a cake, but nothing of flour, baked in ovens, would rise at Miss Deacon's evocation. Still, the meal was laid in the beloved 'parlour,' with the view of hills and valleys and climbing woods from the open window, and the old furniture was still pleasant to see, and the old books in the shelves had many memories. One of the most respected of the armchairs had be- come weak in the castors and had to be artfully propped up, but Lucian found it very comfortable after the hard forms. When tea was over he went out and strolled in the garden and orchards, and looked over the stile down into the brake, where foxgloves and bracken and broom mingled with the hazel undergrowth, where he knew of secret glades and untracked recesses, deep in the woven green, the cabinets for many years of his lonely meditations. Every path about his home, every field and hedge- row had dear and friendly memories for him; and the odour of the meadowsweet was better than the incense steaming in the sunshine. He loitered, and hung over the stile till the far-off woods began to turn purple, till the white mists were wreathing in the valley.

The Hill of Dreams

Day after day, through all that August, morn- ing and evening were wrapped in haze; day after day the earth shimmered in the heat, and the air was strange, unfamiliar. As he wandered in the lanes and sauntered by the cool sweet verge of the woods, he saw and felt that nothing was common or accus- tomed, for the sunlight transfigured the meadows and changed all the form of the earth. Under the violent Provencal sun, the elms and beeches looked exotic trees, and in the early morning when the mists were thick the hills had put on an unearthly shape.

The one adventure of the holidays was the visit to the Roman fort, to that fantastic hill about whose steep bastions and haggard oaks he had seen the flames of sunset writhing nearly three years before. Ever since that Saturday evening in January, the lonely valley had been a desirable place to him; he had watched the green battlements in summer and winter weather, had seen the heaped mounds rising dimly amidst the drifting rain, had marked the vio- lent height swim up from the ice-white mists of summer evenings, had watched the fairy bulwarks glimmer and vanish in hovering April twilight. In the hedge of the lane there was a gate on which he used to lean and look down south to where the hill surged up so suddenly, its summit defined on summer evenings not only by the rounded ramparts but by the ring of dense green foliage that marked the cir-

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cle of oak trees. Higher up the lane, on the way he had come that Saturday afternoon, one could see the white walls of Morgan's farm on the hill- side to the north, and on the south there was the stile with the view of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage smoke; but down in the hollow, looking over the gate, there was no hint of human work, except those green and antique battlements, on which the oaks stood in circle, guarding the inner wood.

The ring of the fort drew him with stronger fas- cination during that hot August weather. Standing, or as his headmaster would have said, mooning by the gate, and looking into that enclosed and secret valley, it seemed to his fancy as if there were a halo about the hill, an aureole that played like flame around it. One afternoon as he gazed from his station by the gate the sheer sides and the swell- ing bulwarks were more than ever things of en- chantment; the green oak ring stood out against the sky as still and bright as in a picture, and Lucian, in spite of his respect for the law of trespass, slid over the gate. The farmers and their men were busy on the uplands with the harvest, and the ad- venture was irresistible. At first he stole along by the brook in the shadow of the alders, where the grass and the flowers of wet meadows grew richly; but as he drew nearer to the fort, and its height now rose sheer above him, he left all shelter, and begart desperately to mount. There was not a breath of

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wind; the sunlight shone down on the bare hillside; the loud chirp of the grasshoppers was the only sound. It was a steep ascent and grew steeper as the valley sank away. He turned for a moment, and looked down towards the stream which now seemed to wind remote between the alders; above the valley there were small dark figures moving in the cornfield, and now and again there came the faint echo of a high-pitched voice singing through the air as on a wire. He was wet with heat; the sweat streamed off his face, and he could feel it trickling all over his body. But above him the green bastions rose defiant, and the dark ring of oaks promised coolness. He pressed on, and higher, and at last began to crawl up the vallum, on hands and knees, grasping the turf and here and there the roots that had burst through the red earth. And then he lay, panting with deep breaths, on the summit.

Within the fort it was all dusky and cool and hollow; it was as if one stood at the bottom of a great cup. Within, the wall seemed higher than without, and the ring of oaks curved up like a dark green vault. There were nettles growing thick and rank in the foss; they looked different from the common nettles in the lanes, and Lucian, letting his hand touch a leaf by accident, felt the sting burn like fire. Beyond the ditch there was an under- growth, a dense thicket -of trees, stunted and old,

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crooked and withered by the winds into awkward and ugly forms; beech and oak and hazel and ash and yew twisted and so shortened and deformed that each seemed, like the nettle, of no common kind. He began to fight his way through the ugly growth, stumbling and getting hard knocks from the re- bound of the twisted boughs. His foot struck once or twice against something harder than wood, and looking down he saw stones white with the leprosy of age, but still showing the work of the axe. And farther, the roots of the stunted trees gripped the foot-high relics of a wall; and a round heap of fallen stones nourished rank, unknown herbs, that smelt poisonous. The earth was black and unctuous, and bubbling under the feet, left no track behind. From it, in the darkest places where the shadow was thick- est, swelled the growth of an abominable fungus, making the still air sick with its corrupt odour, and he shuddered as he felt the horrible thing pulped beneath his feet. Then there was a gleam of sun- light, and as he thrust the last boughs apart, he stumbled into the open space in the heart of the camp. It was a lawn of sweet close turf in the centre of the matted brake, of clean firm earth from which no shameful growth sprouted, and near the middle of the glade was a stump of a felled yew- tree, left untrimmed by the woodman. Lucian thought it must have been made for a seat; a crooked bough through which a little sap still ran

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was a support for the back, and he sat down and rested after his toil. It was not really so comfort- able a seat as one of the school forms, but the satis- faction was to find anything at all that would serve for a chair. He sat there, still panting after the climb and his struggle through the dank and jungle- like thicket, and he felt as if he were growing hotter and hotter; the sting of the nettle was burning his hand, and the tingling fire seemed to spread all over his body.

Suddenly, he knew that he was alone. Not merely solitary; that he had often been amongst the woods and deep in the lanes; but now it was wholly different and a very strange sensation. He thought of the valley winding far below him, all its fields by the brook green and peaceful and still, without path or track. Then he had climbed the abrupt surge of the hill, and passing the green and swelling battlements, the ring of oaks, and the matted thickets, had come to the central space. And behind there were, he knew, many desolate fields, wild as common, untrodden, unvisited. He was utterly alone. He still grew hotter as he sat on the stump, and at last lay down at full length on the soft grass, and more at his ease felt the waves of heat pass over his body.

And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined, delicious things, indulg- ing a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air

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seemed to beat upon him in palpable waves, and the nettle sting tingled and itched intolerably; and he was alone upon the fairy hill, within the great mounds, within the ring of oaks, deep in the heart of the matted thicket. Slowly and timidly he be- gan to untie his boots, fumbling with the laces, and glancing all the while on every side at the ugly mis- shapen trees that hedged the lawn. Not a branch was straight, not one was free, but all were inter- laced and grew one about another; and just above ground, where the cankered stems joined the protu- berant roots, there were forms that imitated the human shape, and faces and twining limbs that amazed him. Green mosses were hair, and tresses were stark in grey lichen; a twisted root swelled into a limb ; in the hollows of the rotted bark he saw the masks of men. His eyes were fixed and fascinated by the simulacra of the wood, and could not see his hands, and so at last, and suddenly, it seemed, he lay in the sunlight, beautiful with his olive skin, dark haired, dark eyed, the gleaming bodily vision of a strayed faun.

Quick flames now quivered in the substance of his nerves, hints of mysteries, secrets of life passed trembling through his brain, unknown desires stung him. As he gazed across the turf and into the thicket, the sunshine seemed really to become green, and the contrast between the bright glow poured on the lawn and the black shadow of the brake made an

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odd flickering light, in which all the grotesque pos- tures of stem and root began to stir; the wood was alive. The turf beneath him heaved and sank as with the deep swell of the sea. He fell asleep, and lay still on the grass, in the midst of the thicket.

He found out afterwards that he must have slept for nearly an hour. The shadows had changed when he awoke; his senses came to him with a sud- den shock, and he sat up and stared at his bare limbs in stupid amazement. He huddled on his clothes and laced his boots, wondering what folly had be- set him. Then, while he stood indecisive, hesita- ting, his brain a whirl of puzzled thought, his body trembling, his hands shaking; as with electric heat, sudden remembrance possessed him. A flaming blush shone red on his cheeks, and glowed and thrilled through his limbs. As he awoke, a brief and slight breeze had stirred in a nook of the matted boughs, and there was a glinting that might have been the flash of sudden sunlight across shadow, and the branches rustled and murmured for a moment, perhaps at the wind's passage.

He stretched out his hands, and cried to his visi- tant to return; he entreated the dark eyes that had shone over him, and the scarlet lips that had kissed him. And then panic fear rushed into his heart, and he ran blindly, dashing through the wood. He climbed the vallum, and looked out, crouching, lest anybody should see him. Only the shadows were

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changed, and a breath of cooler air mounted from the brook; the fields were still and peaceful, the black figures moved, far away, amidst the corn, and the faint echo of the high-pitched voices sang thin and distant on the evening wind. Across the stream, in the cleft on the hill, opposite to the fort, the blue wood smoke stole up a spiral pillar from the chimney of old Mrs. Gibbon's cottage. He be- gan to run full tilt down the steep surge of the hill, and never stopped till he was over the gate and in the lane again. As he looked back, down the valley to the south, and saw the violent ascent, the green swelling bulwarks, and the dark ring of oaks ; the sunlight seemed to play about the fort with an aureole of flame.

'Where on earth have you been all this time, Lucian,' said his cousin when he got home, 'Why, you look quite ill. It is really madness of you to go walking in such weather as this. I wonder you haven't got a sunstroke. And the tea must be nearly cold. I couldn't keep your father waiting, you know.'

He muttered something about being rather tired, and sat down to his tea. It was not cold, for the 'cosy' had been put over the pot, but it was black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great consolation that he had

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only been asleep and dreaming queer, nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolu- tion, and thought the loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most abominably, must have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recol- lections. He remembered that when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with thick folds of his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good length, had put it in his pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was almost interested when he came in from his evening stroll about the garden and saw the specimen.

'Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?' he said. 'You haven't been to Caermaen, have you?'

'No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common.'

'Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know what it is?'

'No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles.'

'Yes; it's a Roman nettle — urtica pilulifera. It's a rare plant. Burrows says it's to be found at Caer- maen, but I was never able to come across it. I must add it to the flora of the parish.'

Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a flora accom- panied by a hortus siccus, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put the speci-

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men on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.

Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening in the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the fort. But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it seemed all delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in the afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar's wife, had 'commanded' his pres- ence at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven, ruddy of face, was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He 'deplored' all extreme party convictions, and thought the great needs of our beloved Church were conciliation, moderation, and above all 'amolgamation' — so he pronounced the word. Mrs. Dixon was tall, impos- ing, splendid, well fitted for the episcopal order, with gifts that would have shone at the palace. There were daughters, who studied German Literature, and thought Miss Frances Ridley Havergal wrote poetry, but Lucian had no fear of them ; he dreaded the boys. Everybody said they were such fine manly fellows, such gentlemanly boys, with such a good manner, sure to get on in the world. Lucian had said 'Bother!' in a very violent manner when the gracious invitation was conveyed to him, but there was no getting out of it. Miss Deacon did her best to make him look smart; his ties were all so disgrace-

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ful that she had to supply the want with a narrow ribbon of a sky-blue tint; and she brushed him so long and so violently that he quite understood why a horse sometimes bites and sometimes kicks the groom. He set out between two and three in a gloomy frame of mind; he knew too well what spend- ing the afternoon with honest manly boys meant. He found the reality more lurid than his anticipa- tion. The boys were in the field, and the first re- mark he heard when he got in sight of the group was:

'Hullo, Lucian, how much for the tie?' 'Fine tie,' another, a stranger, observed. 'You bagged it from the kitten, didn't you?'

Then they made up a game of cricket, and he was put in first. He was 1. b. w. in the second over, so they all said, and had to field for the rest of the afternoon. Arthur Dixon, who was about his own age, forgetting all the laws of hospitality, told him he was a beastly muff when he missed a catch, rather a difficult catch. He missed several catches, and it seemed as if he were always pant- ing after balls, which, as Edward Dixon said, any fool, even a baby could have stopped. At last the game broke up, solely from Lucian's lack of skill, as everybody declared. Edward Dixon, who was thirteen, and had a swollen red face and a project- ing eye, wanted to fight him for spoiling the game, and the others agreed that he funked the fight in a

The Hill of Dreams

rather dirty manner. The strange boy, who was called De Card, and was understood to be distantly related to Lord De Carti of M'Carthytown, said openly that the fellows at his place wouldn't stand such a sneak for five minutes. So the afternoon passed off very pleasantly indeed, till it was time to go into the vicarage for weak tea, home-made cake, and unripe plums. He got away at last. As he went out at the gate he heard De Card's final ob- servation:

'We like to dress well at our place. His gov- ernor must be beastly poor to let him go about like that. D'ye see his trousers are all ragged at heel? Is old Taylor a gentleman?'

It had been a very gentlemanly afternoon, but there was a certain relief when the vicarage was far behind, and the evening smoke of the little town, once the glorious capital of Siluria, hung haze- like over the ragged roofs and mingled with the river mist. He looked down from the height of the road on the huddled horses, saw the points of light start out suddenly from the cottages on the hillside beyond, and gazed at the long lovely valley fading in the twilight, till the darkness came and all that remained was the sombre ridge of the forest. The way was pleasant through the solemn scented lane, with glimpses of dim country, the vague mys- tery of night overshadowing the woods and mead- ows. A warm wind blew gusts of odour from the

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meadowsweet by the brook, now and then bee and beetle span homeward through the air, booming a deep note as from a great organ far away, and from the verge of the wood came the 'who-oo, who- oo, who-oo' of the owls, a wild strange sound that mingled with the whirr and rattle of the night-jar, deep in the bracken. The moon swam up through the films of misty clouds, and hung, a golden glorious lantern, in mid-air; and, set in the dusky hedge, the little green fires of the glowworms appeared. He sauntered slowly up the lane, drinking in the re- ligion of the scene, and thinking the country by night as mystic and wonderful as a dimly-lit cathedral. He had quite forgotten the 'manly young fellows' and their sports, and only wished as the land began to shimmer and gleam in the moonlight that he knew by some medium of words or colour how to repre- sent the loveliness about his way.

'Had a pleasant evening, Lucian?' said his father when he came in.

'Yes, I had a nice walk home. Oh, in the after- noon we played cricket. I didn't care for it much. There was a boy named De Carti there, he is stay- ing with the Dixons. Mrs. Dixon whispered to me when we were going in to tea, "He's a second cousin of Lord De Card's," and she looked quite gravely as if she were in church.'

The parson grinned grimly and lit his old pipe.

'Baron De Carti's great-grandfather was a Dub- 27

The Hill of Dreams

lin attorney,' he remarked. 'Which his name was Jeremiah M'Carthy. His prejudiced fellow-citi- zens called him the Unjust Steward, also the Bloody Attorney, and I believe that "to hell with M'Carthy" was quite a popular cry about the time of the Union.'

Mr. Taylor was a man of very wide and irregu- lar reading and a tenacious memory; he often used to wonder why he had not risen in the Church. He had once told Mr. Dixon a singular and drolatique anecdote concerning the bishop's college days, and he never discovered why the prelate did not bow ac- cording to his custom when the name of Taylor was called at the next visitation. Some people said the reason was lighted candles, but that was impossible, as the Reverend and Honourable Smallwood Staf- ford, Lord Beamys's son, who had a cure of souls in the cathedral city, was well known to burn no end of candles, and with him the bishop was on the best of terms. Indeed the bishop often stayed at Coplesey (pronounced 'Copsey') Hall, Lord Beamys's place in the west.

Lucian had mentioned the name of De Carti with intention, and had perhaps exaggerated a little Mrs. Dixon's respectful manner. He knew such inci- ,dents cheered his father, who could never look at these subjects from a proper point of view, and, as people said, sometimes made the strangest remarks for a clergyman. This irreverent way of treating

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serious things was one of the great bonds between father and son, but it tended to increase their isola- tion. People said they would often have liked to ask Mr. Taylor to garden-parties, and tea-parties, and other cheap entertainments, if only he had not been such an extreme man and so queer. Indeed, a year before, Mr. Taylor had gone to a garden- party at the Castle, Caermaen, and had made such fun of the bishop's recent address on missions to the Portuguese, that the Gervases and Dixons and all who heard him were quite shocked and annoyed. And, as Mrs. Meyrick of Lanyravon observed, his black coat was perfectly green with age; so on the whole the Gervases did not like to invite Mr. Tay- lor again. As for the son, nobody cared to have him; Mrs. Dixon, as she said to her husband, really asked him out of charity.

'I am afraid he seldom gets a real meal at home,' she remarked, 'so I thought he would enjoy a good wholesome tea for once in a way. But he is such an unsatisfactory boy, he would only have one slice of that nice plain cake, and I couldn't get him to take more than two plums. They were really quite ripe too, and boys are usually so fond of fruit.'

Thus Lucian was forced to spend his holidays chiefly in his own company, and make the best he could of the ripe peaches on the south wall of the rectory garden. There was a certain corner where the heat of that August seemed concen-

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trated, reverberated from one wall to the other, and here he liked to linger of mornings, when the mists were still thick in the valleys, 'mooning,' meditating, extending his walk from the quince to the medlar and back again, beside the moulder- ing walls of mellowed brick. He was full of a certain wonder and awe, not unmixed with a swell of strange exultation, and wished more and more to be alone, to think over that wonderful after- noon within the fort. In spite of himself the im- pression was fading; he could not understand that feeling of mad panic terror that drove him through the thicket and down the steep hillside; yet, he had experienced so clearly the physical shame and reluc- tance of the flesh; he recollected that for a few seconds after his awakening the sight of his own body had made him shudder and writhe as if it had suffered some profoundest degradation. He saw before him a vision of two forms; a faun with tin- gling and pricking flesh lay expectant in the sun- light, and there was also the likeness of a miserable shamed boy, standing with trembling body and shak- ing, unsteady hands. It was all confused, a pro- cession of blurred images, now of rapture and ec- stasy, and now of terror and shame, floating in a light that was altogether phantasmal and unreal. He dared not approach the fort again; he lingered in the road to Caermaen that passed behind it, but a mile away, and separated by the wild land and

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a strip of wood from the towering battlements. Here he was looking over a gate one day, doubtful and wondering, when he heard a heavy step behind him, and glancing round quickly saw it was old Morgan of the White House.

'Good afternoon, Master Lucian,' he began. 'Mr. Taylor pretty well, I suppose? I be goin' to the house a minute; the men in the fields are wantin' some more cider. Would you come and taste a drop of cider, Master Lucian? It's very good, sir, indeed.'

Lucian did not want any cider, but he thought it would please old Morgan if he took some, so he said he should like to taste the cider very much indeed. Morgan was a sturdy, thick-set old man of the ancient stock; a stiff churchman, who break- fasted regularly on fat broth and Caerphilly cheese in the fashion of his ancestors; hot, spiced elder wine was for winter nights, and gin for festal seasons. The farm had always been the freehold of the family, and when Lucian, in the wake of the yeoman, passed through the deep porch by the oaken door, down into the long dark kitchen, he felt as though the seventeenth century still lingered on. One mullioned window, set deep in the sloping wall, gave all the light there was through quarries of thick glass in which there were whorls and circles, so that the lapping rose-branch and the garden and the fields beyond were distorted to the sight. Two

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heavy beams, oaken but whitewashed, ran across the ceiling; a little glow of fire sparkled in the great fire- place, and a curl of blue smoke fled up the cavern of the chimney. Here was the genuine chimney- corner of our fathers; there were seats on each side of the fireplace where one could sit snug and shel- tered on December nights, warm and merry in the blazing light, and listen to the battle of the storm, and hear the flame spit and hiss at the falling snow- flakes. At the back of the fire were great black- ened tiles with raised initials and a date — I. M., 1684.

'Sit down, Master Lucian, sit down, sir,' said Morgan.

'Annie,' he called through one of the numerous doors, 'here's Master Lucian, the parson, would like a drop of cider. Fetch a jug, will you, di- rectly?'

'Very well, father,' came the voice from the dairy, and presently the girl entered, wiping the jug she held. In his boyish way Lucian had been a good deal disturbed by Annie Morgan ; he could see her on Sundays from his seat in church, and her skin, curiously pale, her lips that seemed as though they were stained with some brilliant pigment, her black hair, and the quivering black eyes, gave him odd fancies which he had hardly shaped to himself. Annie had grown into a woman in three years, and

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he was still a boy. She came into the kitchen, curt- sying and smiling.

'Good-day, Master Lucian, and how is Mr. Tay- lor, sir? *

'Pretty well, thank you. I hope you are well/

'Nicely, sir, thank you. How nice your voice do sound in church, Master Lucian, to be sure. I was telling father about it last Sunday.'

Lucian grinned and felt uncomfortable, and the girl set down the jug on the round table and brought a glass from the dresser. She bent close over him as she poured out the green oily cider, fragrant of the orchard; her hand touched his shoulder for a moment, and she said, 'I beg your pardon, sir,' very prettily. He looked up eagerly at her face; the black eyes, a little oval in shape, were shining, and the lips smiled. Annie wore a plain dress of some black stuff, open at the throat; her skin was beauti- ful. For a moment the ghost of a fancy hovered unsubstantial in his mind; and then Annie curtsied as she handed him the cider, and replied to his thanks with, 'And welcome kindly, sir.'

The drink was really good; not thin, nor sweet, but round and full and generous, with a fine yellow flame twinkling through the green when one held it up to the light. It was like a stray sunbeam hover- ing on the grass in a deep orchard, and he swal- lowed the glassful with relish, and had some more,

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warmly commending it. Mr. Morgan was touched.

'I see you do know a good thing, sir,' he said. 'Iss, indeed, now, it's good stuff though it's my own makin'. My old grandfather he planted the trees in the time of the wars, and he was a very good judge of an apple in his day and generation. And a famous grafter he was, to be sure. You will never see no swelling in the trees he grafted at all what- ever. Now there's James Morris, Penyrhaul, he's a famous grafter, too, and yet them Redstreaks he grafted for me five year ago, they be all swollen- like below the graft already. Would you like to taste a Blemmin pippin, now, Master Lucian? there be a few left in the loft, I believe.'

Lucian said he should like an apple very much and the farmer went out by another door, and Annie stayed in the kitchen talking. She said Mrs. Tre- vor, her married sister, was coming to them soon to spend a few days.

'She's got such a beautiful baby,' said Annie, 'and he's quite sensible-like already, though he's only nine months old. Mary would like to see you, sir, if you would be so kind as to step in; that is, if it's not troubling you at all, Master Lucian. I suppose you must be getting a fine scholar now, sir?'

'I am doing pretty well, thank you,' said the boy. 'I was first in my form last term.'

'Fancy ! To think of that ! D'you hear, father, what a scholar Master Lucian be getting?'

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'He be a rare grammarian, I'm sure,' said the farmer. 'You do take after your father, sir; I al- ways do say that nobody have got such a good deliverance in the pulpit.'

Lucian did not find the Blenheim Orange as good as the cider but he ate it with all the appearance of relish, and put another, with thanks, into his pocket. He thanked the farmer again when he got up to go; and Annie curtsied and smiled, and wished him good-day, and welcome, kindly.

Lucian heard her saying to her father as he went out what a nice-mannered young gentleman he was getting, to be sure; and he went on his way, think- ing that Annie was really very pretty, and speculat- ing as to whether he would have the courage to kiss her, if they met in a dark lane. He was quite sure she would only laugh, and say, 'Oh, Master Lucian !'

For many months he had occasional fits of recol- lection, both cold and hot; but the bridge of time gradually lengthening, made those dreadful and de- licious images grow more and more indistinct, till at last they all passed into that wonderland which a youth looks back upon in amazement, not knowing why this used to be a symbol of terror or that of joy. At the end of each term he would come home and find his father a little more despondent, and harder to cheer even for a moment; and the wall paper and the furniture grew more and more dingy and shabby. The two cats, loved and ancient

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beasts, that he remembered when he was quite a little boy, before he went to school, died miserably, one after the other. Old Polly, the pony, at last fell down in the stable from the weakness of old age, and had to be killed there; the battered old trap ran no longer along the well remembered lanes. There was long meadow grass on the lawn, and the trained fruit trees on the wall had got quite out of hand. At last, when Lucian was seventeen, his father was obliged to take him from school; he could no longer afford the fees. This was the sorry ending of many hopes, and dreams of a double- first, a fellowship, distinction and glory that the poor parson had long entertained for his son, and the two moped together, in the shabby room, one on each side of the sulky fire, thinking of dead days and finished plans, and seeing a grey future in the years that advanced towards them. At one time there seemed some chance of a distant relative com- ing forward to Lucian's assistance; and indeed it was quite settled that he should go up to London with certain definite aims. Mr. Taylor told the good news to his acquaintances — his coat was too green now for any pretence of friendship; and Lu- cian himself spoke of his plans to Burrows the doc- tor and Mr. Dixon, and one or two others. Then the whole scheme fell through, and the parson and his son suffered much sympathy. People, of course, had to say they were sorry, but in reality the news

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was received with high spirits, with the joy with which one sees a stone, as it rolls down a steep place, give yet another bounding leap towards the pool beneath. Mrs. Dixon heard the pleasant tidings from Mrs. Colley, who came in to talk about the Mothers' Meeting and the Band of Hope. Mrs. Dixon was nursing little ^Ethelwig, or some such name, at the time, and made many affecting ob- servations on the general righteousness with which the world was governed. Indeed, poor Lucian's disappointment seemed distinctly to increase her faith in the Divine Order, as if it had been some example in Butler's Analogy.

'Aren't Mr. Taylor's views very extreme?' she said to her husband the same evening.

'I am afraid they are,' he replied. 'I was quite grieved at the last Diocesan Conference at the way in which he spoke. The dear old bishop had given an address on Auricular Confession; he was forced to do so, you know, after what had happened, and I must say that I never felt prouder of our be- loved Church.'

Mr. Dixon told all the Homeric story of the conference, reciting the achievements of the cham- pions, 'deploring' this and applauding that. It seemed that Mr. Taylor had had the audacity to quote authorities which the bishop could not very well repudiate, though they were directly opposed to the 'safe' episcopal pronouncement.

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Mrs. Dixon of course was grieved; it was 'sad' to think of a clergyman behaving so shamefully.

'But you know, dear,' she proceeded, 'I have been thinking about that unfortunate Taylor boy and his disappointments, and after what you've just told me, I am sure it's some kind of judgment on them both. Has Mr. Taylor forgotten the vows he took at his ordination? But don't you think, dear, I am right, and that he has been punished: "The sins of the fathers"?'

Somehow or other Lucian divined this atmos- phere of threatenings and judgments, and shrank more and more from the small society of the coun- tryside. For his part, when he was not 'mooning' in the beloved fields and woods of happy memory, he shut himself up with books, reading whatever could be found on the shelves, and amassing a store of incongruous and obsolete knowledge. Long did he linger with the men of the seventeenth century; delaying in the gay sunlit streets with Pepys, and listening to the charmed sound of the Restoration Revel; roaming by peaceful streams with Izaak Walton, and the great Catholic divines; enchanted with the portrait of Herbert the loving ascetic; awed by the mystic breath of Crashaw. Then the cava- lier poets sang their gallant songs; and Herrick made Dean Prior magic ground by the holy incanta- tion of a verse. And in the old proverbs and homely sayings of the time he found the good and

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beautiful English life, a time full of grace and dig- nity and rich merriment. He dived deeper and deeper into his books; he had taken all obsolescence to be his province; in his disgust at the stupid usual questions, 'Will it pay?' 'What good is it?' and so forth, he would only read what was uncouth and useless. The strange pomp and symbolism of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; the Rosicrucian mysteries of Fludd, the enigmas of Yaughan, dreams of alchemists — all these were his delight. Such were his companions, with the hills and hanging woods, the brooks and lonely water- pools; books, the thoughts of books, the stirrings of imagination, all fused into one phantasy by the magic of the outland country. He held himself aloof from the walls of the fort; he was content to see the heaped mounds, the violent height with faery bulwarks, from the gate in the lane, and to leave all within the ring of oaks in the mystery of his boy- hood's vision. He professed to laugh at himself and at his fancies of that hot August afternoon, when sleep came to him within the thicket, but in his heart of hearts there was something that never faded — something that glowed like the red glint of a gypsy's fire seen from afar across the hills and mists of the night, and known to be burning in a wild land. Sometimes, when he was sunken in his books, the flame of delight shot up, and showed him a whole province and continent of his nature, all

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shining and aglow; and in the midst of the exulta- tion and triumph he would draw back a little afraid. He had become ascetic in his studious and melan- choly isolation, and the vision of such ecstacies frightened him. He began to write a little; at first very tentatively and feebly, and then with more con- fidence. He showed some of his verses to his father, who told him with a sigh that he had once hoped to write — in the old days at Oxford, he added.

'They are very nicely done,' said the parson; 'but I'm afraid you won't find anybody to print them, my boy.'

So he pottered on; reading everything, imitating what struck his fancy, attempting the effect of the classic metres in English verse, trying his hand at a masque, a Restoration comedy, forming impossible plans for books which rarely got beyond half a dozen lines on a sheet of paper; beset with splendid fancies which refused to abide before the pen. But the vain joy of conception was not altogether vain, for it gave him some armour about his heart.

The months went by, monotonous, and sometimes blotted with despair. He wrote and planned and filled the waste-paper basket with hopeless efforts. Now and then he sent verses or prose articles to magazines, in pathetic ignorance of the trade. He felt the immense difficulty of the career of literature without clearly understanding it; the battle was

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happily in a mist, so that the host of the enemy, terribly arrayed, was to some extent hidden. Yet there was enough of difficulty to appal; from fol- lowing the intricate course of little nameless books, from hushed twilight woods, from the vision of the mountains, and the breath of the great wind, pass- ing from deep to deep, he would come home filled with thoughts and emotions, mystic fancies which he yearned to translate into the written word. And the result of the effort seemed always to be bathos ! Wooden sentences, a portentous stilted style, ob- scurity, and awkwardness clogged the pen ; it seemed impossible to win the great secret of language; the stars glittered only in the darkness, and vanished away in clearer light. The periods of despair were often long and heavy, the victories very few and trifling; night after night he sat writing after his father had knocked out his last pipe, filling a page with difficulty in an hour, and usually forced to thrust the stuff away in despair, and go unhappily to bed, conscious that after all his labour he had done nothing. And these were moments when the ac- customed vision of the land alarmed him, and the wild domed hills and darkling woods seemed symbols of some terrible secret in the inner life of that stranger — himself. Sometimes when he was deep in his books and papers, sometimes on a lonely walk, sometimes amidst the tiresome chatter of Caermaen 'society,' he would thrill with a sudden sense of

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awful hidden things, and there ran that quivering flame through his nerves that brought back the rec- ollection of the matted thicket, and that earlier appearance of the bare black boughs enwrapped with flames. Indeed, though he avoided the solitary lane, and the sight of the sheer height, with its ring of oaks and moulded mounds, the image of it grew more intense as the symbol of certain hints and suggestions. The exultant and insurgent flesh seemed to have its temple and castle within those olden walls, and he longed with all his heart to escape, to set himself free in the wilderness of Lon- don, and to be secure amidst the murmur of modern streets.

II

LUCIAN was growing really anxious about his manuscript. He had gained enough ex- perience at twenty-three to know that edi- tors and publishers must not be hurried; but his book had been lying at Messrs. Beit's office for more than three months. For six weeks he had not dared to expect an answer, but afterwards life had become agonising. Every morning, at post-time, the poor wretch nearly choked with anxiety to know whether his sentence had arrived, and the rest of the day was racked with alternate pangs of hope and despair. Now and then he was almost assured of success; coming over these painful and eager pages in memory, he found parts that were admirable, while again, his inexperience reproached him, and he feared he had written a raw and awkward book, wholly unfit for print. Then he would compare what he remembered of it with notable magazine articles and! books praised by reviewers, and fancy that after all there might be good points in the thing; he could not help liking the first chapter for instance. Perhaps the letter might come to-morrow. So it went on; week after week of sick torture made more exquisite by such gleams of hope; it was as if

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he were stretched in anguish on the rack, and the pain relaxed and kind words spoken now and again by the tormentors, and then once more the grind- ing pang and burning agony. At last he could bear suspense no longer, and he wrote to Messrs. Beit, inquiring in a humble manner whether the manu- script had arrived in safety. The firm replied in a very polite letter, expressing their regret that their reader had been suffering from a cold in the head, and had therefore been unable to send in his report. A final decision was promised in a week's time, and the letter ended with apologies 'for the delay and a hope that he had suffered no inconvenience. Of course the 'final decision' did not come at the end of the week, but the book was returned at the end of three weeks, with a circular thanking the author for his kindness in submitting the manuscript, and regretting that the firm did not see their way to producing it. He felt relieved; the operation that he had dreaded and deprecated for so long was at last over, and he would no longer grow sick of mornings when the letters were brought in. He took his parcel to the sunny corner of the garden, where the old wooden seat stood sheltered from the biting March winds. Messrs. Beit had put in with the circular one of their short lists, a neat booklet, headed: Messrs. Beit & Co.'s Recent Publications. He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to read: 'A Bad Un to Beat:

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a Novel of Sporting Life, by the honourable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede, author of Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack, The Sportleigh Stables, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries.' The Press, it seemed, pronounced this to be 'a charming book. Mrs. Runnymede has wit and humour enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen ordinary sporting novels.' 'Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a past-mis- tress in the art of novel writing,' said the Review; while Miranda, of Smart Society, positively bubbled with enthusiasm. 'You must forgive me, Aminta,' wrote this young person, 'if I have not sent the description I promised of Madame Lulu's new crea- tions and others of that ilk. I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave about the Honourable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede's last novel, A Bad Un to Beat. He says all the Smart Set are talking of it, and it seems the police have to regulate the crowd at Mudie's. You know I read everything Mrs. Runnymede writes, so I sent out Miggs directly to beg, borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I burnt the midnight oil before I laid it down. Now, mind, you get it, you will find it so awfully chic.' Nearly all the novelists on Messrs. Beit's list were ladies, their works all ran to three volumes, and all of them pleased the Press, the Review, and Miranda of Smart Society. One of these books, Millicent's Marriage, by Sarah Pock- lington Sanders, was pronounced fit to lie on the

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schoolroom table, on the drawing-room bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our daughters. 'This,' the reviewer went on, 'is high praise, especially in these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamour of self-styled "artists." We would warn the young men who prate so persistently of style and literature, con- struction and prose harmonies, that we believe the English reading public will have none of them. Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and manly life of the hunting field, pictures of innocent and healthy English girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us ; these are the topics that will always find a welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous stylist.'

He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish ; he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face, spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs. Beit had quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy if he cared to trouble

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himself with such things. Lucian leant back and roared with indecent laughter till the tabby torn' cat who had succeeded to the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his sunny corner, with a face like the reviewer's, innocent and round and whiskered. At last he turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen sheets of manuscript, and began to read in a rather desponding spirit; it was pretty obvious, he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath the standard of publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the mak- ing; it was a pious attempt to translate into English prose the form and mystery of the domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red swollen brook swirling through leafless woods. Day-dreams and toil at nights had gone into the eager pages, he had laboured hard to do his very best, writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and over again, grudging no patience, no trouble if only it might be pretty good; good enough to print and sell to a reading public which had become critical. He glanced through the manuscript in his hand, and to his astonishment, he could not help thinking that in its measure it was decent work. After three months his prose seemed fresh and strange as if it had been wrought by another man, and in spite of himself he found charming things, and impressions that were not commonplace. He knew how weak it all was compared with his own

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conceptions; he had seen an enchanted city, awful, glorious, with flame smitten about its battlements, like the cities of the Sangraal, and he had moulded his copy in such poor clay as came to his hand; yet, in spite of the gulf that yawned between the idea and the work, he knew as he read that the thing accomplished was very far from failure. He put back the leaves carefully, and glanced again at Messrs. Beit's list. It had escaped his notice that A Bad Un to Beat was in its third three- volume edition. It was a great thing, at all events, to know in what direction to aim, if he wished to succeed. If he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win the approval of the coy and retiring Miranda of Smart Society; that modest maiden might in his praise interrupt her task of disinterested advertisement, her philanthropic coun- sels to 'go to Jumper's, and mind you ask for Mr. C. Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue pa- per with the yellow spots at ten shillings the piece.' He put down the pamphlet, and laughed again at the books and the reviewers: so that he might not weep. This then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after all, was but an ill-played tragedy.

The rejected manuscript was hidden away, and his father quoted Horace's maxim as to the benefit of keeping literary works some time 'in the wood.' There was nothing to grumble at, though Lucian

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was inclined to think the duration of the reader's catarrh a little exaggerated. But this was a trifle; he did not arrogate to himself the position of a small commercial traveller, who expects prompt civility as a matter of course, and not at all as a favour. He simply forgot his old book, and re- solved that he would make a better one if he could. With the hot fit of resolution, the determination not to be snuffed out by one refusal upon him, he began to beat about in his mind for some new scheme. At first it seemed that he had hit upon a promising subject; he began to plot out chapters and scribble hints for the curious story that had entered his mind, arranging his circumstances and noting the effects to be produced with all the enthu- siasm of the artist. But after the first breath the' aspect of the work changed; page after page was tossed aside as hopeless, the beautiful sentences he had dreamed of refused to be written, and his puppets remained stiff and wooden, devoid of life or motion. Then all the old despair came back, the agonies of the artificer who strives and per- severes in vain; the scheme that seemed of amorous fire turned to cold hard ice in his hands. He let the pen drop from his fingers, and wondered how he could have ever dreamed of writing books. Again, the thought occurred that he might do something if he could only get away, and join the sad pro- cession in the murmuring London streets, far from

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the shadow of those awful hills. But it was quite impossible ; the relative who had once promised assistance was appealed to, and wrote expressing his regret that Lucian had turned out a 'loafer,' wasting his time in scribbling, instead of trying to earn his living. Lucian felt rather hurt at this letter, but the parson only grinned grimly as usual. He was thinking of how he signed a cheque many years before, in the days of his prosperity, and the cheque was payable to the didactic relative, then in but a poor way, and of a thankful turn of mind.

The old rejected manuscript had almost passed out of his recollection. It was recalled oddly enough. He was looking over the Reader, and enjoying the admirable literary criticisms, some three months after the return of his book, when his eye was attracted by a quoted passage in one of the notices. The thought and style both wakened memory, the cadences were familiar and beloved. He read through the review from the beginning; it was a very favourable one, and pro- nounced the volume an immense advance on Mr. Ritson's previous work. 'Here, undoubtedly, the author has discovered a vein of pure metal,' the reviewer added, 'and we predict that he will go far.' Lucian had not yet reached his father's stage, he was unable to grin in the manner of that irreverent parson. The passage selected for high

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praise was taken almost word for word from the manuscript now resting in his room, the work that had not reached the high standard of Messrs. Beit & Co., who, curiously enough, were the pub- lishers of the book reviewed in the Reader. He had a few shillings in his possession, and wrote at once to a bookseller in London for a copy of The Chorus in Green, as the author had oddly named the book. He wrote on June 2ist, and thought he might fairly expect to receive the interesting volume by the 24th; but the postman, true to his traditions, brought nothing for him, and in the afternoon he resolved to walk down to Caermaen, in case it might have come by a second post; or it might have been mislaid at the office; they for- got parcels sometimes, especially when the bag was heavy and the weather hot.

This 24th was a sultry and oppressive day; a grey veil of cloud obscured the sky, and a vaporous mist hung heavily over the land, and fumed up from the valleys. But at five o'clock, when he started, the clouds began to break, and the sunlight suddenly streamed down through the misty air, making ways and channels of rich glory, and bright islands in the gloom. It was a pleasant and shining evening when, passing by devious back streets to avoid the barbarians (as he very rudely called the respectable inhabitants of the town), he reached the post-office; which was also the general shop.

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'Yes, Mr. Taylor, there is something for you, sir,' said the man. 'William the postman forgot to take it up this morning,' and he handed over the packet. Lucian took it under his arm and went slowly through the ragged winding lanes till he came into the country. He got over the first stile on the road, and sitting down in the shelter of a hedge, cut the strings and opened the parcel. The Chorus in Green was got up in what reviewers call a dainty manner: a bronze-green cloth, well-cut gold lettering, wide margins and black 'old-face' type, all witnessed to the good taste of Messrs. Beit & Co. He cut the pages hastily and began to read. He soon found that he had wronged Mr. Ritson — that old literary hand had by no means stolen his book wholesale, as he had expected. There were about two hundred pages in the pretty little volume, and of these about ninety were Lucian's, dovetailed into a rather dif- ferent scheme with skill that was nothing short of exquisite. And Mr. Ritson's own work was often very good; spoilt here and there for some tastes by the 'cataloguing' method, a somewhat material- istic way of taking an inventory of the holy country things; but, for that very reason, contrasting to great advantage with Lucian's hints and dreams and note of haunting. And here and there Mr. Ritson had made little alterations in the style of the pass- ages he had conveyed, and most of these alterations

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were amendments, as Lucian was obliged to con- fess, though he would have liked to argue one or two points with his collaborator and corrector. He lit his pipe and leant back comfortably in the hedge, thinking things over, weighing very coolly his expe- rience of humanity, his contract with the 'society' of the countryside, the affair of The Chorus in Green, and even some little incidents that had struck him as he was walking through the streets of Caer- maen that evening. At the post-office, when he was inquiring for his parcel, he had heard two old women grumbling in the street; it seemed, so far as he could make out, that both had been disappointed in much the same way. Each had applied for an alms at the vicarage; they were probably shiftless old wretches who had liked beer for supper all their lives, and had forgotten the duties of econ- omy and 'laying up treasure upon earth.' One was a Roman Catholic, hardened, and beyond the reach of conversion; she had been advised to ask alms of the priests, 'who are always creeping and crawling about.' The other old sinner was a dis- senter, and, 'Mr. Dixon has quite enough to do to relieve good Church people.' Mrs. Dixon, as- sisted by Henrietta, was, it seemed, the lady high almoner, who dispensed these charities. As she said to Mrs. Colley, they would end by keeping all the beggars in the county, and they really couldn't afford it. A large family was an expensive

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thing, and the girls must have new frocks. 'Mr. Dixon is always telling me and the girls that we must not demoralise the people by indiscriminate charity.' Lucian had heard of these sage counsels, and thought of them as he listened to the bitter com- plaints of the gaunt, hungry old women. In the back street by which he passed out of the town he saw a large 'healthy' boy kicking a sick cat; the poor creature had just strength enough to crawl under an outhouse door; probably to die in tor- ments. He did not find much satisfaction in thrash- ing the boy, but he did it with hearty good will. Further on, at the corner where the turnpike used to be, was a big notice, announcing a meeting at the schoolroom in aid of the mission to the Portu- guese. 'Under the patronage of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese,' was the imposing headline; the Reverend Merivale Dixon, vicar of Caermaen, was to be in the chair, supported by Stanley Gervase, Esq., J. P., and by many of the clergy and gentry of the neighbourhood. Senhor Diabo, 'formerly a Rormanist priest, now an evangelist in Lisbon,' would address the meeting, 'Funds are urgently needed to carry on this good work,' concluded the notice. So he lay well back in the shade of the hedge, and thought whether some sort of an article could not be made by vindicating the terrible Yahoos; one might point out that they were in many respects a simple and unsophisticated race,

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whose faults were the result of their enslaved posi- tion, while such virtues as they had were all their own. They might be compared, he thought, much to their advantage, with more complex civilisations. There was no hint of anything like the Beit system of publishing as in existence amongst them, the great Yahoo nation would surely never feed and encourage a scabby Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness from the horse-community, and the witty dean, in all his minuteness, had said nothing of 'safe' Yahoos. On reflection, however, he did not feel quite secure of this part of his defence; he remembered that the leading brutes had favour- ites, who were employed in certain simple domestic offices about their masters; and it seemed doubtful whether the contemplated vindication would not break down on this point. He smiled queerly to himself as he thought of these comparisons, but his heart burnt with a dull fury. Throwing back his unhappy memory, he recalled all the contempt and scorn he had suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of him and of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his ears, he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some creature beneath the swine in intelli- gence and manners, merciless, as he went by with his

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eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers and contempt, and contempt from such animals as these! This putrid filth, moulded into human shape, made only to fawn on the rich and beslaver them, thinking no foulness too foul if it were done in honour of those in power and authority; and no refined cruelty of contempt too cruel if it were contempt of the poor and humble and oppressed; it was to this obscene and ghastly throng that he was something to be pointed at. And these men and women spoke of sacred things, and knelt before the awful altar of God, before the altar of tremendous fire, surrounded as they professed by Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven; and in their very church they had one aisle for the rich and another for the poor. And the species was not peculiar to Caermaen; the rich business men in London and the successful brother author were probably amusing themselves at the expense of the poor struggling creature they had injured and wounded; just as the 'healthy' boy had burst into a great laugh when the miserable sick cat cried out in bitter agony, and trailed its limbs slowly, as it crept away to die. Lucian looked into his own life and his own will; he saw that in spite of his follies, and his want of success, he had not been consciously malignant, he had never deliberately aided in oppression, or looked on it

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with enjoyment and approval, and he felt that when he lay dead beneath the earth, eaten by swarming worms, he would be in a purer company than now, when he lived amongst human creatures. And he was to call this loathsome beast, all sting and filth, brother! 'I had rather call the devils my brothers,' he said in his heart, 'I would fare better in hell.' Blood was in his eyes, and as he looked up the sky seemed of blood, and the earth burnt with fire.

The sun was sinking low on the mountain when he set out on the way again. Burrows, the doctor, coming home in his trap, met him a little lower on the road, and gave him a friendly good-night.

'A long way round on this road, isn't it?' said the doctor. 'As you have come so far, why don't you try the short cut across the fields? You will find it easily enough; second stile on the left hand, and then go straight ahead.'

He thanked Dr. Burrows and said he would try the short cut, and Burrows span on home- ward. He was a gruff and honest bachelor, and often felt very sorry for the lad, and wished he could help him. As he drove on, it suddenly oc- curred to him that Lucian had an awful look on his face, and he was sorry he had not asked him to jump in, and come to supper. A hearty slice of beef, with strong ale, whisky and soda after- wards, a good pipe, and certain Rabelaisian tales

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which the doctor had treasured for many years, would have done the poor fellow a lot of good, he was certain. He half turned round on his seat, and looked to see if Lucian were still in sight, but he had passed the corner, and the doctor drove on, shivering a little; the mists were beginning to rise from the wet banks of the river.

Lucian trailed slowly along the road, keeping a look out for the stile the doctor had mentioned. It would be a little of an adventure, he thought, to find his way by an unknown track; he knew the direction in which his home lay and he imagined he would not have much difficulty in crossing from one stile to another. The path led him up a steep bare field, and when he was at the top, the town and the valley winding up to the north stretched before him. The river was stilled at the flood, and the yellow water, reflecting the sunset, glowed in its deep pools like dull brass. These burning pools, the level meadows fringed with shuddering reeds, the long dark sweep of the forest on the hill, were all clear and distinct, yet the light seemed to have clothed them with a new garment, even as voices from the streets of Caermaen sounded strangely, mounting up thin with the smoke. There beneath him lay the huddled cluster of Caermaen, the ragged and uneven roofs that marked the winding and shabby streets, here and there a pointed gable rising above its meaner fellows; beyond he recognized

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the piled mounds that marked the circle of the amphitheatre, and the dark edge of trees that grew where the Roman wall whitened and waxed old beneath the frosts and rains of eighteen hundred years. Thin and strange, mingled together, the voices came up to him on the hill; it was as if an outland race inhabited the ruined city and talked in a strange language of strange and terrible things. The sun had slid down the sky, and hung quivering over the huge dark dome of the mountain like a burnt sacrifice, and then suddenly vanished. In the afterglow the clouds began to writhe and turn scar- let, and shone so strangely reflected in the pools of the snake-like river, that one would have said the still waters stirred, the fleeting and changing of the clouds seeming to quicken the stream, as if it bub- bled and sent up gouts of blood. But already about the town the darkness was forming; fast, fast the shadows crept upon it from the forest, and from all sides banks and wreaths of curling mist were gathering, as if a ghostly leaguer were being built up against the city, and the strange race who lived in its streets. Suddenly there burst out from the stillness the clear and piercing music of the reveille, calling, recalling, iterated, reiterated, and ending with one long high fierce shrill note with which the steep hills rang. Perhaps a boy in the school band was practising on his bugle, but for Lucian it was magic. For him it was the note of the Roman

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trumpet, tuba mirum spargens sonum, filling all the hollow valley with its command, reverberated in the dark places in the far forest, and resonant in the old graveyards without the walls. In his imagina- tion he saw the earthern gates of the tombs broken open, and the serried legion swarming to the eagles. Century by century they passed up ; they rose, drip- ping, from the river bed, they rose from the level, their armour shone in the quiet orchard, they gath- ered in ranks and companies from the cemetery, and as the trumpet sounded, the hill fort above the town gave up its dead. By hundreds and thousands the ghostly battle surged about the standard, behind the quaking mist, ready to march against the moulder- ing walls they had built so many years before.

He turned sharply; it was growing very dark, and he was afraid of missing his way. At first the path led him by the verge of a wood; there was a noise of rustling and murmuring from the trees as if they were taking evil counsel together. A high hedge shut out the sight of the darkening valley, and he stumbled on mechanically, without taking much note of the turnings of the track, and when he came out from the wood shadow to the open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered and uncertain. A dark wild twilight country lay before him, confused dim shapes of trees near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the further hills and woods were dimmer, and

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all the air was very still. He gazed about him, scanning the dusky earth, and trying to make out some familiar shape, some well-known form of hill or wood. Suddenly the darkness about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot up on the moun- tain, and for a moment the little world of the woodside and the steep hill shone in a pale light, and he thought he saw his path beaten out in the turf before him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of fire, and it led him on down the ragged slope, his feet striking against ridges of ground, and falling from beneath him at a sudden dip. The bramble bushes shot out long prickly vines, amongst which he was entangled, and lower he was held back by wet bubbling earth. He had descended into a dark and shady valley, beset and tapestried with gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises were the only sounds, strange, unutterable mutterings, dismal, inarticulate. He pushed on in what he hoped was the right direction, stumbling from stile to gate, peering through mist and shadow, and still vainly seeking for any known landmark. Presently another sound broke upon the grim air, the murmur of water poured over stones, gurgling against the old misshapen roots of trees, and run- ning clear in a deep channel. He passed into the chill breath of the brook, and almost fancied he heard two voices speaking in its murmur; there seemed a ceaseless utterance of words, an endless

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argument. With a mood of horror pressing on him, he listened to the noise of waters, and the wild fancy seized him that he was not deceived, that two unknown beings stood together there in the darkness and tried the balances of his life, and spoke his doom. The hour in the matted thicket rushed over the great bridge of years to his thought; he had sinned against the earth, and the earth trem- bled and shook for vengeance. He stayed still for a moment, quivering with fear, and at last went on blindly, no longer caring for the path, if only he might escape from the toils of that dismal shud- dering hollow. As he plunged through the hedges the bristling thorns tore his face and hands; he fell amongst stinging-nettles and was pricked as he beat out his way amidst the gorse. He raced headlong, his head over his shoulder, through a windy wood, bare of undergrowth; there lay about the ground mouldering stumps, the relics of trees that had thundered to their fall, crashing and tearing to earth, long ago; and from these remains there flowed out a pale thin radiance, filling the spaces of the sounding wood with a dream of light. He had lost all count of the track; he felt he had fled for hours, climbing and descending, and yet not advancing; it was as if he stood still and the shadows of the land went by, in a vision. But at last a hedge, high and straggling, rose before him, and as

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he broke through it, his feet slipped, and he fell headlong down a steep bank into a lane. He lay still, half-stunned, for a moment, and then rising unsteadily, he looked desperately into the darkness before him, uncertain and bewildered. In front it was black as a midnight cellar, and he turned about, and saw a glint in the distance, as if a candle were flickering in a farm-house window. He began to walk with trembling feet towards the light, when suddenly something pale started out from the shadows before him, and seemed to swim and float down the air. He was going down hill, and he hastened onwards, and he could see the bars of a stile framed dimly against the sky, and the figure still advanced with that gliding motion. Then, as the road declined to the valley, the landmark he had been seeking appeared. To his right there surged up in the darkness the darker summit of the Roman fort, and the streaming fire of the great full moon glowed through the bars of the wizard oaks, and made a halo shine about the hill. He was now quite close to the white appearance, and saw that it was only a woman walking swiftly down the lane; the floating movement was an effect due to the sombre air and the moon's glamour. At the gate, where he had spent so many hours gazing at the fort, they walked foot to foot, and he saw it was Annie Morgan.

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'Good evening, Master Lucian,' said the girl, 'it's very dark, sir, indeed.'

'Good evening, Annie,' he answered calling her by her name for the first time, and he saw that she smiled with pleasure. 'You are out late, aren't you?'

'Yes, sir; but I've been taking a bit of supper to old Mrs. Gibbon. She's been very poorly the last few days, and there's nobody to do anything for her.'

Then there were really people who helped one another; kindness and pity were not mere myths, fictions of 'society,' as useful as Doe and Roe, and as non-existent. The thought struck Lucian with a shock; the evening's passion and delirium, the wild walk and physical fatigue had almost shattered him in body and mind. He was 'de- generate,' decadent, and the rough rains and blustering winds of life, which a stronger man would have laughed at and enjoyed, were to him 'hail- storms and fire-showers.' After all, Messrs. Beit, the publishers, were only sharp men of business, and these terrible Dixons and Gervases and Colleys merely the ordinary limited clergy and gentry of a quiet country town; sturdier sense would have dis- missed Dixon as an old humbug, Stanley Gervase, Esquire, J. P., as a 'bit of a bounder,' and the ladies as 'rather a shoddy lot' But he was walk- ing slowly now, in painful silence, his heavy, lag-

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ging feet striking against the loose stones. He was not thinking of the girl beside him; only something seemed to swell and grow and swell within his heart; it was all the torture of his days, weary hopes and weary disappointment, scorn rankling and throb- bing, and the thought 'I had rather call the devils my brothers and live with them in hell.' He choked and gasped for breath, and felt involun- tary muscles working in his face, and the impulses of a madman stirring him; he himself was in truth the realisation of the vision of Caermaen that night, a city with mouldering walls beset by the ghostly legion. Life and the world and the laws of the sunlight had passed away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead began. The Celt assailed him, beckoning from the weird wood he called the world, and his far-off ancestors, the 'little people' crept out of their caves, muttering charms and incantations in hissing inhuman speech; he was be- leagured by desires that had slept in his race for ages.

'I am afraid you are very tired, Master Lucian. Would you like me to give you my hand over this rough bit?'

He had stumbled against a great round stone and had nearly fallen. The woman's hand sought his in the darkness, as he felt the touch of her soft warm flesh, he moaned, and a pang shot through his arm to his heart. He looked up and found he

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had only walked a few paces since Annie had spoken; he had thought they had wandered for hours to- gether. The moon was just mounting above the oaks, and the halo round the dark hill brightened. He stopped short, and keeping his hold of Annie's hand, looked into her face. A hazy glory of moon- light shone around them and lit up their eyes. He had not greatly altered since his boyhood; his face was pale olive in colour, thin and oval ; marks of pain had gathered about the eyes, and his black hair was already stricken with grey. But the eager curious gaze still remained, and what he saw be- fore him lit up his sadness with a new fire. She stopped too, and did not offer to draw away, but looked back with all her heart. They were alike in many ways ; her skin was also of that olive colour, but her face was sweet as a beautiful summer night, and her black eyes showed no dimness, and the smile on the scarlet lips was like a flame when it brightens a dark and lonely land.

'You are sorely tired, Master Lucian, let us sit down here by the gate.'

It was Lucian who spoke next: 'My dear, my dear!' And their lips were together again, and their arms locked together, each holding the other fast. And then the poor lad let his head sink down on his sweetheart's breast, and burst into a passion of weeping. The tears streamed down his face, and he shook with sobbing, in the happiest

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moment that he had ever lived. The woman bent over him and tried to comfort him, but his tears were his consolation and his triumph. Annie was whispering to him, her hand laid on his heart; she was whispering beautiful, wonderful words, that soothed him as a song. He did not know what they meant.

'Annie, dear, dear Annie, what are you saying to me? I have never heard such beautiful words. Tell me, Annie, what do they mean?'

She laughed and said it was only nonsense that the nurses sang to the children.

'No, no, you are not to call me Master Lucian any more,' he said, when they parted, 'you must call me Lucian; and I, I worship you, my dear Annie.'

He fell down before her, embracing her knees, and adored, and she allowed him, and confirmed his worship. He followed slowly after her, pass- ing the path which led to her home with a longing glance. Nobody saw any difference in Lucian when he reached the rectory. He came in with his usual dreamy indifference, and told how he had lost his way by trying the short cut. He said he had met Dr. Burrows on the road, and that he had recom- mended the path by the fields. Then, as dully as if he had been reading some story out of a news- paper, he gave his father the outlines of the Beit case, producing the pretty little book called The

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Chorus in Green. The parson listened in amaze- ment.

'You mean to tell me that you wrote this book?' he said. He was quite roused.

'No; not all of it. Look; this bit is mine, and that; and the beginning of this chapter. Nearly the whole of the third chapter is by me.'

He closed the book without interest, and indeed he felt astonished at his father's excitement. The incident seemed to him; unimportant.

'And you say that eighty or ninety pages of this book are yours, and these scoundrels have stolen your work?'

'Well, I suppose they have. I'll fetch the manu- script, if you would like to look at it.'

The manuscript was duly produced, wrapped in brown paper, with Messrs. Beit's address label on it, and the post-office dated stamps.

'And the other book has been out a month.'

The parson, forgetting the sacerdotal office, and his good habit of grinning, swore at Messrs. Beit and Mr. Ritson, calling them damned thieves, and then began to read the manuscript, and to compare it with the printed book.

'Why, it's splendid work. My poor fellow,' he said after a while, 'I had no notion you could write so well. I used to think of such things in the old days at Oxford; 'old Bill,' the tutor, used to praise my essays, but I never wrote anything like this.

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And this infernal ruffian of a Ritson has taken all your best things and mixed them up with his own rot to make it go down. Of course you'll expose the gang?'

Lucian was mildly amused; he couldn't enter into his father's feelings at all. He sat smoking in one of the old easy chairs, taking the rare relish of a hot grog with his pipe, and gazing out of his dreamy eyes at the violent old parson. He was pleased that his father liked his book, because he knew him to be a deep and sober scholar and a cool judge of good letters; but he laughed to him- self when he saw the magic of print. The parson had expressed no wish to read the manuscript when it came back in disgrace; he had merely grinned, said something about boomerangs, and quoted Horace with relish. Whereas now, before the book in its neat case, lettered with another man's name, his approbation of the writing and his disapproval of the 'scoundrels,' as he called them, were loudly expressed, and though a good smoker, he blew and puffed vehemently at his pipe.

'You'll expose the rascals, of course, won't you?' he said again.

'Oh no, I think not. It really doesn't matter much, does it? After all, there are some very weak things in the book; doesn't it strike you as 'young?' I have been thinking of another plan, but I haven't done much with it lately. But I

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believe I've got hold of a really good idea this time, and if I can manage to see the heart of it I hope to turn out a manuscript worth stealing. But it's so hard to get at the core of an idea — the heart, as I call it,' he went on after a pause. 'It's like having a box you can't open, though you know there's something wonderful inside. But I do be- lieve I've a fine thing in my hands, and I mean to try my best to work it.'

Lucian talked with enthusiasm now, but his father, on his side, could not share these ardours. It was his part to be astonished at excitement over a book that was not even begun, the mere ghost of a book flitting elusive in the world of unborn masterpieces and failures. He had loved good letters, but he shared unconsciously in the general belief that literary attempt is always pitiful, though he did not subscribe to the other half of the popular faith — that literary success is a matter of very little importance. He thought well of books, but only of printed books; in manuscripts he put no faith, and the paulo-post-futurum tense he could not in any maner conjugate. He returned once more to the topic of palpable interest.

'But about this dirty trick these fellows have played on you. You won't sit down quietly and bear it, surely? It's only a question of writing to the papers.'

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did, I should only get laughed at. Some time ago a man wrote to the Reader, complaining of his play being stolen. He said that he had sent a little one-act comedy to Burleigh, the great dramatist, asking for his advice. Burleigh gave his advice and took the idea for his own very successful play. So the man said, and I daresay it was true enough. But the victim got nothing by his complaint. "A pretty state of things," everybody said. "Here's a Mr. Tomson, that no one has ever heard of, bothers Burleigh with his rubbish, and then accuses him of petty larceny. Is it likely that a man of Burleigh's position, a playwright who can make his five thousand a year easily, would borrow from an unknown Tomson?" I should think it very likely, indeed,' Lucian went on, chuckling, 'but that was the verdict. No; I don't think I'll write to the papers.'

'Well, well, my boy, I suppose you know your own business best. I think you are mistaken, but you must do as you like.'

'It's all so unimportant,' said Lucian, and he really thought so. He had sweeter things to dream of, and desired no communion of feeling with that madman who had left Caermaen some four hours before. He felt he had made a fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity of which he had been guilty; such boiling hatred was not only wicked, but absurd. A man could do no good

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who put himself into a position of such violent antagonism against his fellow-creatures; so Lucian rebuked his heart, saying that he was old enough to know better. But he remembered that he had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret ecstasy that he treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite even for thought till he was quite alone; and then there was that scheme for a new book that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago; it seemed to have arisen into life again within the last hour; he understood that he had started on a false tack, he had taken the wrong aspect of his idea. Of course the thing couldn't be written in that way; it was like trying to read a page turned upside down; and he saw those char- acters he had vainly sought suddenly disambushed, and a splendid inevitable sequence of events un- rolled before him.

It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed itself as a living thing, stir- ring and mysterious, and warm as life itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in reality he was full of amazement at his own son, and now and again he slipped sly furtive glances towards the tranquil young man in the arm- chair by the empty hearth. In the first place, Mr. Taylor was genuinely impressed by what he had read of Lucian's work; he had so long been ac- customed to look upon all effort as futile, that

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success amazed him. In the abstract, of course, he was prepared to admit that some people did write well and got published and made money, just as other persons successfully backed an outsider at heavy odds; but it had seemed as improbable that Lucian should show even the beginnings of achieve- ment in one direction as in the other. Then the boy evidently cared so little about it; he did not appear to be proud of being worth robbing, nor was he angry with the robbers.

He sat back luxuriously in the disreputable old chair, drawing long slow wreaths of smoke, tasting his whisky from time to time, and evidently well at ease with himself. The father saw him smile, and it suddenly dawned upon him that his son was very handsome; he had such kind gentle eyes and a kind mouth, and his pale cheeks were flushed like a girl's. Mr. Taylor felt moved. What a harm- less young fellow Lucian had been; no doubt a little queer and different from others, but wholly inof- fensive, and patient under disappointment and Miss Deacon. Her contribution to the evening's dis- cussion had been characteristic; she had remarked, firstly, that writing was a very unsettling occupation, and secondly, that it was extremely foolish to en- trust one's property to people of whom one knew nothing. Father and son had smiled together at these observations, which were probably true enough. Mr. Taylor at last left Lucian alone; he

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shook hands with a good deal of respect, and said, almost deferentially:

'You mustn't work too hard, old fellow. I wouldn't stay up too late, if I were you, after that long walk. You must have gone miles out of your way.'

'I'm not tired now, though. I feel as if I could write my new book on the spot'; and the young man laughed a gay sweet laugh that struck the father as a new note in his son's life.

He sat still a moment after his father had left the room. He cherished his chief treasure of thought in its secret place; he would not enjoy it yet. He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote, or tried to write, and began taking pens and paper from the drawer. There was a great pile of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side, and signifying many hours of desperate scrib- bling, of heart-searching and rack of his brain; an array of poor, eager lines written by a waning fire with waning hope; all useless and abandoned. He took up the sheets cheerfully, and began in delicious idleness to look over these fruitless efforts. A page caught his attention; he remembered how he wrote it while a November storm was dashing against the panes; and there was another, with a queer blot in one corner; he had got up from his chair and looked out, and all the earth was white fairyland,

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and the snowflakes whirled round and round in the wind. Then he saw the chapter begun of a night in March: a great gale blew that night and rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard. He had heard the trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the wind, and across the heaven a white moon fled awfully before the streaming clouds. And all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet, and past unhappiness was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of toil were holy. He turned over half a dozen leaves and began to sketch out the outlines of the new book on the unused pages; running out a skeleton plan on one page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on others. He wrote rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving phrases grew under his pen; a particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire; he gave his hand free course, and saw the written work glow- ing; and action and all the heat of existence quick- ened and beat on the wet page. Happy fancies took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back in his chair he felt the stir and rush of the story as if it had been some portion of his own life. He read over what he had done with a re- newed pleasure in the nimble and flowing work- manship, and as he put the little pile of manuscript tenderly in the drawer he paused to enjoy the anticipation of to-morrow's labour.

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And then but the rest of the night was given

to tender and delicious things, and when he went up to bed a scarlet dawn was streaming from the east.

Ill

FOR days Lucian lay in a swoon of pleasure, smiling when he was addressed, sauntering happily in the sunlight, hugging recollection warm to his heart. Annie had told him that she was going on a visit to her married sister, and said, with a caress, that he must be patient. He pro- tested against her absence, but she fondled him, whispering her charms in his ear till he gave in, and then they said good-bye, Lucian adoring on his knees. The parting was as strange as the meeting, and that night when he laid his work aside, and let himself sink deep into the joys of memory, all the encounter seemed as wonderful and impossible as magic.

'And you really don't mean to do anything about those rascals?' said his father.

'Rascals? Which rascals? Oh, you mean Beit. I had forgotten all about it. No; I don't think I shall trouble. They're not worth powder and shot.'

And he returned to his dream, pacing slowly from the medlar to the quince and back again. It seemed trivial to be interrupted by such questions; he had

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not even time to think of the book he had recom- menced so eagerly, much less of this labour of long ago. He recollected without interest that it cost him many pains, that it was pretty good here and there, and that it had been stolen, and it seemed that there was nothing more to be said on the mat- ter. He wished to think of the darkness in the lane, of the kind voice that spoke to him, of the kind hand that sought his own, as he stumbled on the rough way. So far, it was wonderful. Since he had left school and lost the company of the worthy barbarians who had befriended him there, he had almost lost the sense of kinship with hu- manity; he had come to dread the human form as men dread the hood of the cobra. To Lucian a man or a woman meant something that stung, that spoke words that rankled, and poisoned his life with scorn. At first such malignity shocked him: he would ponder over words and glances and won- der if he were not mistaken, and he still sought now and then for sympathy. The poor boy had ro- mantic ideas about women; he believed they were merciful and pitiful, very kind to the unlucky and helpless. Men perhaps had to be different; after all, the duty of a man was to get on in the world, or, in plain language, to make money, to be suc- cessful; to cheat rather than to be cheated, but always to be successful; and he could understand that one who fell below this high standard must

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expect to be severely judged by his fellows. For example, there was young Bennett, Miss Spurry's nephew. Lucian had met him once or twice when he was spending his holidays with Miss Spurry, and the two young fellows had compared literary notes together. Bennett showed some beautiful things he had written, over which Lucian had grown both sad and enthusiastic. It was such exquisite magic verse, and so much better than anything he ever hoped to write, that there was a touch of anguish in his congratulations. But when Bennett, after many vain prayers to his aunt, threw up a safe position in the bank, and betook himself to a London garret, Lucian was not surprised at the general verdict.

Mr. Dixon, as a clergyman, viewed the question from a high standpoint and found it all deplorable, but the general opinion was that Bennett was a hopeless young lunatic. Old Mr. Gervase went purple when his name was mentioned, and the young Dixons sneered very merrily over the ad- venture.

'I always thought he was a beastly young ass,' said Edward Dixon, 'but I didn't think he'd chuck away his chances like that. Said he couldn't stand a bank! I hope he'll be able to stand bread and water. That's all those littery fellows get, I be- lieve, except Tennyson and Mark Twain and those sort of people.'

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Lucian of course sympathised with the unfortu- nate Bennett, but such judgments were after all only natural. The young man might have stayed in the bank and succeeded to his aunt's thousand a year, and everybody would have called him a very nice young fellow — 'clever, too.' But he had de- liberately chosen, as Edward Dixon had said, to chuck his chances away for the sake of literature; piety and a sense of the main chance had alike pointed the way to a delicate course of wheedling, to a little harmless practising on Miss Spurry's in- firmities, to frequent compliances of a soothing na- ture, and the 'young ass' had been blind to the direction of one and the other. It seemed almost right that the vicar should moralise, that Edward Dixon should sneer, and that Mr. Gervase should grow purple with contempt. Men, Lucian thought, were like judges, who may pity the criminal in their hearts, but are forced to vindicate the outraged majesty of the law by a severe sentence. He felt the same considerations applied to his own case; he knew that his father should have had more money, that his clothes should be newer and of a better cut, that he should have gone to the uni- versity and made good friends. If such had been his fortune he could have looked his fellow-men proudly in the face, upright and unashamed. Hav- ing put on the whole armour of a first-rate West End tailor, with money in his purse, having taken

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anxious thought for the morrow, and having some useful friends and good prospects; in such a case he might have held his head high in a gentlemanly and Christian community. As it was he had usually avoided the reproachful glance of his fellows, feel- ing that he deserved their condemnation. But he had cherished for a long time his romantic senti- mentalities about women: literary conventions bor- rowed from the minor poets and pseudo-mediaeval- ists, or so he thought afterwards. But, fresh from school, wearied a little with the perpetual society of barbarian though worthy boys, he had in his soul a charming image of womanhood, before which he worshipped with mingled passion and devotion. It was a nude figure, perhaps, but the shining arms were to be wound about the neck of a vanquished knight, there was rest for the head of a wounded lover; the hands were stretched forth to do works of pity, and the smiling lips were to murmur not love alone, but consolation in defeat. Here was the refuge for a broken heart; here the scorn of men would but make tenderness increase; here was all pity and all charity with loving-kindness. It was a delightful picture, conceived in the 'come rest on this bosom,' and 'a ministering angel thou' man- ner, with touches of allurement that made devotion all the sweeter. He soon found that he had ideal- ised a little; in the affair of young Bennett, while the men were contemptuous the women were virulent.

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He had been rather fond of Agatha Gervase, and she, so other ladies said, had 'set her cap' at him. Now, when he rebelled, and lost the goodwill of his aunt, dear Miss Spurry, Agatha insulted him with all conceivable rapidity. 'After all, Mr. Ben- nett,' she said, 'you will be nothing better than a beggar; now will you? You mustn't think me cruel, but I can't help speaking the truth. Write books!' Her expression filled up the incomplete sentence; she waggled with indignant emotion. These pas- sages came to Lucian's ears, and indeed the Ger- vases boasted of 'how well poor Agatha had be- haved.'

'Never mind, Gathy,' old Gervase had observed. 'If the impudent young puppy comes here again we'll see what Thomas can do with the horse- whip.'

'Poor dear child,' Mrs. Gervase added in telling the tale, 'and she was so fond of him too. But of course it couldn't go on after his shameful be- haviour.'

But Lucian was troubled; he sought vainly for the ideal womanly, the tender note of 'come rest on this bosom.' Ministering angels, he felt con- vinced, do not rub red pepper and sulphuric acid into the wounds of suffering mortals.

Then there was the case of Mr. Vaughan, a squire in the neighbourhood, at whose board all the aristocracy of Caermaen had feasted for years.

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Mr. Vaughan had a first-rate cook, and his cellar was rare, and he was never so happy as when he shared his good things with his friends. His mother kept his house, and they delighted all the girls with frequent dances, while the men sighed over the amazing champagne. Investments proved disastrous, and Mr. Vaughan had to sell the grey manor-house by the river. He and his mother took a little modern stucco villa in Caermaen, wishing to be near their dear friends. But the men were 'very sorry; rough on you, Vaughan. Always thought those Patagonians were risky, but you wouldn't hear of it. Hope we shall see you before very long; you and Mrs. Vaughan must come to tea some day after Christmas.'

'Of course we are all very sorry for them," said Henrietta Dixon. 'No, we haven't called on Mrs. Vaughan yet. They have no regular servant, you know; only a woman in the morning. I hear old mother Vaughan, as Edward will call her, does nearly everything. And their house is absurdly small; it's little more than a cottage. One really can't call it a gentleman's house.'

Then Mr. Vaughan, his heart in the dust, went to the Gervases and tried to borrow five pounds of Mr. Gervase. He had to be ordered out of the house, and, as Edith Gervase said, it was all very painful; 'he went out in such a funny way,' she added, 'just like the dog when he's had a whipping.

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Of course it's sad, even if it is all his own fault, as everybody says, but he looked so ridiculous as he was going down the steps that I couldn't help laugh- ing.' Mr. Vaughan had heard the ringing, youth- ful laughter as he crossed the lawn.

Young girls like Henrietta Dixon and Edith Gervase naturally viewed the Vaughans' comical position with all the high spirits of their age, but the elder ladies could not look at matters in this frivolous light.

'Hush, dear, hush,' said Mrs. Gervase, 'it's all too shocking to be a laughing matter. Don't you agree with me, Mrs. Dixon? The sinful extravagance that went on at Pentre always frightened me. You remember that ball they gave last year? Mr. Ger- vase assured me that the champagne must have cost at least a hundred and fifty shillings the dozen.'

'It's dreadful, isn't it,' said Mrs. Dixon, 'when one thinks of how many poor people there are who would be thankful for a crust of bread?'

'Yes, Mrs. Dixon,' Agatha joined in, 'and you know how absurdly the Vaughans spoilt the cot- tagers. Oh, it was really wicked; one would think Mr. Vaughan wished to make them above their station. Edith and I went for a walk one day nearly as far as Pentre, and we begged a glass of water of old Mrs. Jones who lives in that pretty cottage near the brook. She began praising the Vaughans in the most fulsome manner, and showed

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us some flannel things they had given her at Christ- mas. I assure you, my dear Mrs. Dixon, the flannel was the very best quality; no lady could wish for better. It couldn't have cost less than half-a- crown a yard.'

'I know, my dear, I know. Mr. Dixon always said it couldn't last. How often I have heard him say that the Vaughans were pauperising all the com- mon people about Pentre, and putting every one else in a most unpleasant position. Even from a worldly point of view it was very poor taste on their part. So different from the true charity that Paul speaks of.'

'I only wish they had given away nothing worse than flannel,' said Miss Colley, a young lady of very strict views. 'But I assure you there was a perfect orgy, I can call it nothing else, every Christ- mas. Great joints of prime beef, and barrels of strong beer, and snuff and tobacco distributed wholesale; as if the poor wanted to be encouraged in their disgusting habits. It was really impossible to go through the village for weeks after ; the whole place was poisoned with the fumes of horrid tobacco pipes.'

'Well, we see how that sort of thing ends,' said Mrs. Dixon, summing up judicially. 'We had in- tended to call, but I really think it would be impos- sible after what Mrs. Gervase has told us. The idea of Mr. Vaughan trying to sponge on poor

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Mr. Gervase in that shabby way! I think mean- ness of that kind is so hateful.'

It was the practical side of all this that aston- ished Lucian. He saw that in reality there was no high-flown quixotism in a woman's nature: the smooth arms, made he had thought for caressing, seemed muscular; the hands meant for the doing of works of pity in his system, appeared dexterous in the giving of 'stingers,' as Barnes might say, and the smiling lips could sneer with great ease. Nor was he more fortunate in his personal experiences. As has been told, Mrs. Dixon spoke of him in connection with 'judgments,' and the younger ladies did not exactly cultivate his acquaintance. Theoretically they 'adored' books and thought poetry 'too sweet,' but in practice they preferred talking about mares and fox-terriers and their neighbours.

They were nice girls enough, very like other young ladies in other country towns, content with the teaching of their parents, reading the Bible every morning in their bedrooms, and sitting every Sunday in church amongst the well-dressed 'sheep' on the right hand. It was not their fault if they failed to satisfy the ideal of an enthusiastic dreamy boy, and indeed, they would have thought his feigned woman immodest, absurdly sentimental, a fright ('never wears stays, my dear'), and horrid.

At first he was a good deal grieved at the loss of

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that charming tender woman, the work of his brain. When the Miss Dixons went haughtily by with a scornful waggle, when the Miss Gervases passed in the wagonette, laughing as the mud splashed him, the poor fellow would look up with a face of grief that must have been very comic ; 'like a dying duck,' as Edith Gervase said. Edith was really very pretty, and he would have liked to talk to her, even about fox-terriers, if she would have listened. One afternoon at the Dixons' he really forced himself upon her, and with all the obtuseness of an en- thusiastic boy tried to discuss the Lotus Eaters of Tennyson. It was too absurd. Captain Kempton was making signals to Edith all the time, and Lieu- tenant Gatwick had gone off in disgust, and he had promised to bring her a puppy 'by Vick out of Wasp.' At last the poor girl could bear it no longer :

'Yes, it's very sweet,' she said at last. 'When did you say you were going to London, Mr. Taylor?'

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody, and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, 'just like the dog when he's had a whipping,' to use Edith's own expression. Two or three lessons of this de- scription produced their due effect; and when he saw a male Dixon or Gervase approaching him he bit his lip and summoned up his courage. But when

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he descried a 'ministering angel' he made haste and hid behind a hedge or took to the woods. In course of time the desire to escape became an instinct, to be followed as a matter of course; in the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old ideals were almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the bete humalne, like the adder, would in all probability sting, and he therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special resentment. The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned fang, and it was well to leave them both alone. Then had come that sudden fury of rage against all humanity, as he went out of Caermaen carrying the book that had been stolen from him by the enterprising Beit. He shuddered as he thought of how nearly he had approached the verge of madness, when his eyes filled with blood and the earth seemed to burn with fire. He remembered how he had looked up to the horizon and the sky was blotched with scarlet; and the earth was deep red, with red woods and red fields. There was something of horror in the memory, and in the vision of that wild night walk through dim country, when every shadow seemed a symbol of some terrible impending doom. The murmur of the brook, the wind shrilling through the wood, the pale light flowing from the mouldered trunks, and the picture of his own figure fleeing and fleeting through the shades; all these seemed un-

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happy things that told a story in fatal hieroglyphics. And then the life and laws of the sunlight had passed away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead began. Though his limbs were weary, he had felt his muscles grow strong as steel; a woman, one of the hated race, was beside him in the dark- ness, and the wild beast woke within him, ravening for blood and brutal lust; all the raging desires of the dim race from which he came assailed his heart. The ghosts issued out from the weird wood and from the caves in the hills, besieging him, as he had imagined the spiritual legion besieging Caermaen, beckoning him to a hideous battle and a victory that he had never imagined in his wildest dreams. And then out of the darkness the kind voice spoke again, and the kind hand was stretched out to draw him up from the pit. It was sweet to think of that which he had found at last; the boy's picture incarnate, all the passion and compassion of his longing, all the pity and love and consolation. She, that beautiful passionate woman offering up her beauty in sacrifice to him, she was worthy indeed of his worship. He remembered how his tears had fallen upon her breast, and how tenderly she had soothed him, whis- pering those wonderful unknown words that sang to his heart. And she had made herself defenceless before him, caressing and fondling the body that had been so despised. He exulted in the happy thought that he had knelt down on the ground before her,

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and had embraced her knees and worshipped. The woman's body had become his religion; he lay awake at night looking into the darkness with hungry eyes, wishing for a miracle, that the appearance of the so-desired form might be shaped before him. And when he was alone in quiet places in the wood, he fell down again on his knees, and even on his face, stretching out vain hands in the air, as if they would feel her flesh. His father noticed in those days that the inner pocket of his coat was stuffed with papers; he would see Lucian walking up and down in a secret shady place at the bottom of the orchard, reading from his sheaf of manuscript, replacing the leaves, and again drawing them out. He would walk a few quick steps, and pause as if enraptured, gazing in the air as if he looked through the sha- dows of the world into some sphere of glory, feigned by his thought. Mr. Taylor was almost alarmed at the sight; he concluded of course that Lucian was writing a book. In the first place, there seemed something immodest in seeing the operation performed under one's eyes; it was as if the 'make- up' of a beautiful actress were done on the stage, in full audience ; as if one saw the rounded calves fixed in position, the fleshings drawn on, the voluptuous outlines of the figure produced by means purely mechanical, blushes mantling from the paint-pot, and the golden tresses well secured by the wig- maker. Books, Mr. Taylor thought, should swim

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into one's ken mysteriously; they should appear all printed and bound, without apparent genesis; just as children are suddenly told that they have a little sister, found by mamma in the garden. But Lucian was not only engaged in composition; he was plainly rapturous, enthusiastic; Mr. Taylor saw him throw up his hands, and bow his head with strange gesture. The parson began to fear that his son was like some of those mad Frenchmen of whom he had read, young fellows who had a sort of fury of literature, and gave their whole lives to it, spending days over a page, and years over a book, pursuing art as Englishmen pursue money, building up a ro- mance as if it were a business. Now Mr. Taylor held firmly by the 'walking-stick' theory; he believed that a man of letters should have a real profession, some solid employment in life. 'Get something to do,' he would have liked to say, 'and then you can write as much as you please. Look at Scott, look at Dickens and Trollope.' And then there was a social point of view; it might be right, or it might be wrong, but there could be no doubt that the lit- erary man, as such, was not thought much of in Eng- lish society. Mr. Taylor knew his Thackeray, and he remembered that old Major Pendennis, society personified, did not exactly boast of his neph- ew's occupation. Even Warrington was rather ashamed to own his connection with journalism, and Pendennis himself laughed openly at his novel-

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writing as an agreeable way of making money, a useful appendage to the cultivation of dukes, his true business in life. This was the plain English view, and Mr. Taylor was no doubt right enough in thinking it good, practical common sense. Therefore when he saw Lucian loitering and saun- tering, musing amorously over his manuscript, exhibiting manifest signs of that fine fury which Britons have ever found absurd, he felt grieved at heart, and more than ever sorry that he had not been able to send the boy to Oxford.

'B.N.C. would have knocked all this nonsense out of him,' he thought. 'He would have taken a double First like my poor father and made some- thing of a figure in the world. However, it can't be helped.' The poor man sighed, and lit his pipe, and walked in another part of the garden.

But he was mistaken in his diagnosis of the symp- toms. The book that Lucian had begun lay un- heeded in the drawer; it was a secret work that he was engaged on, and the manuscripts that he took out of that inner pocket never left him day or night. He slept with them next to his heart, and he would kiss them when he was quite alone, a,nd pay them such devotions as he would have paid to her whom they symbolized. He wrote on these leaves a wonderful ritual of praise and devotion; it was the liturgy of his religion. Again and again he copied and recopied this madness of a lover; dallying all

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day over the choice of a word, searching for more exquisite phrases. No common words, no such phrases as he might use in a tale would suffice ; the sentences of worship must stir and be quickened, they must glow and burn, and be decked out as with rare work of jewellery. Every part of that holy and beautiful body must be adored; he sought for terms of extravagant praise, he bent his soul and mind low before her, licking the dust under her feet, abased and yet rejoicing as a Templar before the image of Baphomet. He exulted more especially in the knowledge that there was nothing of the con- ventional or common in his ecstasy; he was not the fervent, adoring lover of Tennyson's poems, who loved with passion and yet with a proud respect, with the love always of a gentleman for a lady. Annie was not a lady; the Morgans had farmed their lands for hundreds of years; they were what Mrs. Gervase and Miss Colley and the rest of them called common people. Tennyson's noble gentle- men thought of their ladies with something of ret- icence : they imagined them dressed in flowing and courtly robes, walking with slow dignity; they dreamed of them as always stately, the future mis- tresses of their houses, mothers of their heirs. Such lovers bowed, but not to low, remembering their own honour, before those who were to be equal companions and friends as well as wives. It was not such conceptions as these that he embodied

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in the amazing emblems of his ritual; he was not, he told himself, a young officer, 'something in the city,' or a rising barrister engaged to a Miss Dixon or a Miss Gervase. He had not thought of look- ing out for a nice little house in a good residential suburb where they would have pleasant society, there were to be no consultations about wall-papers, or jocose whispers from friends as to the necessity of having a room that would do for a nursery. No glad young thing had leant on his arm while they chose the suite in white enamel, and the china for 'our bed-room,' the modest salesman doing his best to spare their blushes. When Edith Gervase mar- ried she would get mamma to look out for two really good servants, 'as we must begin quietly,' and mamma would make sure that the drains and every- thing were right. Then her 'girl friends' would come on a certain solemn day to see all her 'lovely things.' 'Two dozen of everything!' 'Look, Ethel, did you ever see such ducky frills?' 'And that insertion, isn't it quite too sweet?' 'My dear Edith you are a lucky girl.' 'All the underlinen specially made by Madame Lulu !' 'What delicious things !' 'I hope he knows what a prize he is win- ning.' 'Oh ! do look at those lovely ribbon-bows !' 'You darling, how happy you must be.' Real Val- enciennes!' Then a whisper in the lady's ear, and her reply, 'Oh, don't, Nelly!' So they would chirp over their chemises, as in Rabelais they chirped over

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their cups: and everything would be done in due order till the wedding-day, when mamma, who had strained her sinews and the commandments to bring the match about, would weep and look indignantly at the unhappy bridegroom. 'I hope you'll be kind to her, Robert.' Then in a rapid whisper to the bride: 'Mind you insist on Wyman's flushing the drains when you come back; servants are so careless and dirty too. Don't let him go about by himself in Paris. Men are so queer; one never knows. You have got the pills?' And aloud, after these secreta, 'God bless you, my dear ; good-bye ! cluck, clu'ck, good-bye !'

There were stranger things written in the manu- script pages that Lucian cherished, sentences that burnt and glowed like 'coals of fire which hath a most vehement flame.' There were phrases that stung and tingled as he wrote them, and sonorous words poured out in ecstasy and rapture, as in some of the old litanies. He hugged the thought that a great part of what he had invented was in the true sense of the word occult: page after page might have been read aloud to the uninitiated without be- traying the inner meaning. He dreamed night and day over these symbols, he copied and re-copied the manuscript nine times before he wrote it out fairly in a little book which he made himself of a skin of creamy vellum. In his mania for acquirements that should be entirely useless he had gained some

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skill in illumination, or limning as he preferred to call it, always choosing the obscurer word as the ob- scurer arts. First he set himself to the severe prac- tice of the text; he spent many hours and days of toil in struggling to fashion the serried columns of black letter, writing and re-writing till he could shape the massive character with firm true hand. He cut his quills with the patience of a monk in the scriptorium, shaving and altering the nib, lightening and increasing the pressure and flexibility of the points, till the pen satisfied him, and gave a stroke both broad and even. Then he made experiments in inks, searching for some medium that would ri- val the glossy black letter of the old manuscripts; and not till he could produce a fair page of text did he turn to the more entrancing labours of the capi- tals and borders and ornaments. He mused long over the Lombardic letters, as glorious in their way as a cathedral, and trained his hand to execute the bold and flowing lines; and then there was the art of the border, blossoming in fretted splendour all about the page. His cousin, Miss Deacon, called it all a great waste of time, and his father thought he would have done much better in trying to im- prove his ordinary handwriting, which was both ugly and illegible. Indeed, there seemed but a poor demand for the limner's art. He sent some specimens of his skill to an 'artistic firm' in London; a verse of the 'Maud,' curiously emblazoned, and a

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Latin hymn with the notes pricked on a red stave. The firm wrote civilly, telling him that his work, though good, was not what they wanted, and en- closing an illuminated text. 'We have a great de- mand for this sort of thing,' they concluded, 'and if you care to attempt something in this style we should be pleased to look at it.' The said text was 'Thou, God, seest me.' The letter was of a de- graded form, bearing much the same relation to the true character as a 'churchwarden gothic' build- ing does to Canterbury Cathedral; the colours were varied. The initial was pale gold, the h pink, the o black, the u blue, and the first letter was somehow connected with a bird's nest containing the young of the pigeon, who were waited on by the female bird.

'What a pretty text,' said Miss Deacon. 'I should like to nail it up in my room. Why don't you try to do something like that, Lucian? You might make something by it.'

'I sent them these,' said Lucian, 'but they don't like them much.'

'My dear boy! I should think not! Like them! What were you thinking of to draw those queer stiff flowers all round the border? Roses? They don't look like roses at all events. Where do you get such ideas from?'

'But the design is appropriate; look at the words.'

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'My dear Lucian, I can't read the words; it's such a queer old-fashioned writing. Look how plain that text is; one can see what it's about. And this other one; I can't make it out at all.'

'It's a Latin hymn.'

'A Latin hymn? Is it a Protestant hymn? I may be old-fashioned, but Hymns Ancient and Modern is quite good enough for me. This is the music I suppose? But, my dear boy, there are only four lines ; and who ever heard of notes shaped like that: you have made some square and some dia- mond-shaped? Why didn't you look in your poor mother's old music? It's in the ottoman in the drawing-room. I could have shown you how to make the notes; there are crotchets, you know, and quavers.'

Miss Deacon laid down the illuminated Urbs Beata in despair; she felt convinced that her cousin was 'next door to an idiot.'

And he went out into the garden and raged be- hind a hedge. He broke two flower-pots and hit an apple tree very hard with his stick, and then, feeling more- calm, wondered what was the use of trying to do anything. He would not have put the thought into words, but in his heart he was ag- grieved that his cousin liked the pigeons and the text, and did not like his emblematical roses and the Latin hymns. He knew he had taken great pains over the work, and that it was well done, and

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being still a young man he expected praise. He found that in this hard world there was a lack of appreciation; a critical spirit seemed abroad. If he could have been scientifically observed as he writhed and smarted under the strictures of 'the old fool,' as he rudely called his cousin, the spec- tacle would have been extremely diverting. Little boys sometimes enjoy a very similar entertainment; either with their tiny fingers or with mamma's nail- scissors they gradually deprive a fly of its wings and legs. The odd gyrations and queer thin buzzings of the creature as it spins comically round and round never fail to provide a fund of harmless amuse- ment. Lucian, indeed, fancied himself a very ill- used individual; but he should have tried to imitate the nervous organisation of the flies, which, as mamma says, 'can't really feel.'

But now, as he prepared the vellum leaves he remembered his art with joy; he had not laboured to do beautiful work in vain. He read over his manuscript once more, and thought of the design- ing of the pages. He made sketches on furtive sheets of paper, and hunted up books in his father's library for suggestions. There were books about architecture, and mediaeval iron work, and brasses which contributed hints for ornament; and not con- tent with mere pictures he sought in the woods and hedges, scanning the strange forms of trees, and the poisonous growth of great water-plants, and

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the parasite twining of honeysuckle and briony. In one of these rambles he discovered a red earth which he made into a pigment, and he found in the unctuous juice of a certain fern an ingredient which he thought made his black ink still more glossy. His book was written all in symbols, and in the same spirit of symbolism he decorated it, causing wonderful foliage to creep about the text, and showing the blossom of certain mystical flowers, with emblems of strange creatures, caught and bound in rose thickets. All was dedicated to love and a lover's madness, and there were songs in it which haunted him with their lilt and refrain. When the book was finished it replaced the loose leaves as his constant companion by day and night. Three times a day he repeated his ritual to him- self, seeking out the loneliest places in the woods, or going up to his room; and from the fixed intent- ness and rapture of his gaze, the father thought him still severely employed in the questionable proc- ess of composition. At night he contrived to wake for his strange worship; and he had a peculiar cere- mony when he got up in the dark and lit his candle. From a steep and wild hillside not far from the house, he had cut from time to time five large boughs of spiked and prickly gorse. He had brought them into the house, one by one, and had hidden them in the big box that stood beside his bed. Often he woke up weeping and murmuring to him-

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self the words of one of his songs, and then when he had lit the candle, he would draw out the gorse- boughs, and place them on the floor, and taking off his night gown, gently lay himself down on the bed of thorns and spines. Lying on his face, with the candle and the book before him, he would softly and tenderly repeat the praises of his dear, dear Annie, and as he turned over page after page, and saw the raised gold of the majuscules glow and flame in the candle-light, he pressed the thorns into his flesh. At such moments he tasted in all its acute savour the joy of physical pain; and after two or three experiences of such delights he altered his book, making a curious sign in vermilion on the margin of the passages where he was to inflict on himself this sweet torture. Never did he fail to wake at the appointed hour, a strong effort of will broke through all the heaviness of sleep, and he would rise up, joyful though weeping, and rev- erently set his thorny bed upon the floor, offering his pain with his praise. When he had whispered the last word, and had risen from the ground, his body would be all freckled with drops of blood; he used to view the marks with pride. Here and there a spine would be left deep in the flesh, and he would pull these out roughly, tearing through the skin. On some nights when he had pressed with more fervour on the thorns his thighs would stream with blood, red beads standing out on the flesh, and

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trickling down to his feet. He had some difficulty in washing away the bloodstains so as not to leave any traces to attract the attention of the servant; and after a time he returned no more to his bed when his duty had been accomplished. For a coverlet he had a dark rug, a good deal worn, and in this he would wrap his naked bleeding body, and lie down on the hard floor, well content to add an aching rest to the account of his pleasures. He was covered with scars, and those that healed dur- ing the day were torn open afresh at night; the pale olive skin was red with the angry marks of blood, and the graceful form of the young man appeared like the body of a tortured martyr. He grew thinner and thinner every day, for he ate but little ; the skin was stretched on the bones of his face, and the black eyes burnt in dark purple hollows. His relations noticed that he was not looking well.

'Now, Lucian, it's perfect madness of you to go on like this,' said Miss Deacon, one morning at breakfast. 'Look how your hand shakes; some people would say that you had been taking brandy. And all that you want is a little medicine, and yet you won't be advised. You know it's not my fault; I have asked you to try Dr. Jelly's Cooling Powders again and again.'

He remembered the forcible exhibition of the powders when he was a boy, and felt thankful that those days were over. He only grinned at his

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cousin and swallowed a great cup of strong tea to steady his nerves which were shaky enough. Mrs. Dixon saw him one day in Caermaen; it was very hot, and he had been walking rather fast. The scars on his body burnt and tingled and he tottered as he raised his hat to the vicar's wife. She de- cided without further investigation that he must have been drinking in public-houses.

'It seems a mercy that poor Mrs. Taylor was taken,' she said to her husband. 'She has certainly been spared a great deal. That wretched young man passed me this afternoon; he was quite intoxi- cated.'

'How very sad,' said Mr. Dixon. 'A little port, my dear?'

'Thank you, Merivale, I will have another glass of sherry. Dr. Burrows is always scolding me and saying that I must take something to keep up my energy, and this sherry is so weak.'

The Dixons were not teetotallers. They re- gretted it deeply, and blamed the doctor, who 'in- sisted on some stimulant.' However, there was some consolation in trying to convert the parish to total abstinence, or, as they curiously called it, temperance. Old women were warned of the sin of taking a glass of beer for supper; aged labourers were urged to try Cork-ho, the new temperance drink; an uncouth beverage, styled coffee, was dis- pensed at the reading-room. Mr. Dixon preached

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an eloquent 'temperance' sermon, soon after the above conversation, taking as his text: Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. In his discourse he showed that fermented liquor and leaven had much in common, that beer was at the present day 'put away' during Passover by the strict Jews ; and in a moving peroration he urged his dear brethen, 'and more especially those amongst us who are poor in this world's goods,' to beware indeed of that evil leaven which was sapping the manhood of our nation. Mrs. Dixon cried after church:

'Oh, Merivale, what a beautiful sermon ! How earnest you were. I hope it will do good.'

Mr. Dixon swallowed his port with great deco- rum, but his wife fuddled herself every evening with cheap sherry. She was quite unaware of the fact, and sometimes wondered in a dim way why she always had to scold the children after dinner. And so strange things sometimes happened in the nursery, and now and then the children looked queerly at one another after a red-faced woman had gone out, panting.

Lucian knew nothing of his accuser's trials, but he was not long in hearing of his own intoxication. The next time he went down to Caermaen he was hailed by the doctor.

'Been drinking again to-day?'

'No,' said Lucian in a puzzled voice. 'What do you mean?'

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'Oh, well, if you haven't, that's all right, as you'll be able to take a drop with me. Come along in?'

Over the whisky and pipes Lucian heard of the evil rumours affecting his character.

'Mrs. Dixon assured me you were staggering from one side of the street to the other. You quite frightened her, she said. Then she asked me if I recommended her to take one or two ounces of spirit at bedtime for the palpitation; and of course I told her two would be better. I have my living to make here, you know. And upon my word, I think she wants it; she's always gurgling inside like a waterworks. I wonder how old Dixon can stand it.'

'I like "ounces of spirit," ' said Lucian. 'That's taking it medicinally, I suppose. I've often heard of ladies who have to "take it medicinally"; and that's how it's done?'

'That's it. "Dr. Burrows won't listen to me": "I tell him how I dislike the taste of spirits, but he says they are absolutely necessary for my constitu- tion" : "my medical man insists on something at bed- time"; that's the style.'

Lucian laughed gently; all these people had be- come indifferent to him; he could no longer feel savage indignation at their little hypocrisies and malignancies. Their voices uttering calumny, and morality, and futility had become like the thin shrill

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angry note of a gnat on a summer evening; he had his own thoughts and his own life, and he passed on without heeding.

'You come down to Caermaen pretty often don't you?' said the doctor. 'I've seen you two or three times in the last fortnight.'

'Yes, I enjoy the walk.'

'Well, look me up whenever you like, you know. I am often in just at this time, and a chat with a human being isn't bad, now and then. It's a change for me : I'm often afraid I shall lose my patients.'

The doctor had the weakness of these terrible puns, dragged headlong into the conversation. He sometimes exhibited them before Mrs. Gervase, who would smile in a faint and dignified manner, and say:

'Ah, I see. Very amusing indeed. We had an old coachman who was very clever, I believe, at that sort of thing, but Mr. Gervase was obliged to send him away, the laughter of the other domestics was so very boisterous.'

Lucian laughed, not boisterously, but good- humouredly, at the doctor's joke. He liked Bur- rows, feeling that he was a man and not an auto- matic gabbling machine.

'You look a little pulled down,' said the doctor, when Lucian rose to go. 'No, you don't want any medicine. Plenty of beef and beer will do you more good than drugs. I daresay it's the hot

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weather that has thinned you a bit. Oh, you'll be all right again in a month.'

As Lucian strolled out of the town on his way home, he passed a small crowd of urchins assem- bled at the corner of an orchard. They were en- joying themselves immensely. The 'healthy' boy, the same whom he had seen some weeks ago operat- ing on a cat, seemed to have recognised his selfish- ness in keeping his amusements to himself. He had found a poor lost puppy, a little creature with bright pitiful eyes, almost human in their fond friendly gaze. It was not a well-bred little dog; it was certainly not that famous puppy 'by Vick out of Wasp' ; it had rough hair and a foolish long tail which it wagged beseechingly, at once deprecating severity and asking kindness. The poor animal had evidently been used to gentle treatment: it would look up in a boy's face, and give a leap, fawn- ing on him, and then bark in a small doubtful voice, and cower a moment on the ground, astonished per- haps at the strangeness, the bustle and animation. The boys were beside themselves with eagerness; there was quite a babble of voices, arguing, discuss- ing, suggesting. Each one had a plan of his own which he brought before the leader, a stout and sturdy youth.

'Drown him! What be you thinkin' of, mun?' he was saying. 'Tain't no sport at all. You shut your mouth, gwaes. Be you goin' to ask your

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mother for the boiling water? Iss, Bob Williams, I do know all that: but where be you a-going to get the fire from? Be quiet, mun, can't you? Thomas Trevor, be this dog yourn or mine? Now, look you, if you don't all of you shut your bloody mouths, I'll take the dog 'ome and keep him. There now!'

He was a born leader of men. A singular de- pression and lowness of spirit showed itself on the boys' faces. They recognised that the threat might very possibly be executed, and their countenances were at once composed to humble attention. The puppy was still cowering on the ground in the midst of them: one or two tried to relieve the tension of their feelings by kicking him in the belly with their hobnail boots. It cried out with the pain and writhed a little, but the poor little beast did not attempt to bite or even snarl. It looked up with those beseeching friendly eyes at its persecutors, and fawned on them again, and tried to wag its tail and be merry, pretending to play with a straw on the road, hoping perhaps to win a little favour in that way.

The leader saw the moment for his master-stroke. He slowly drew a piece of rope from his pocket.

'What do you say to that, mun? Now, Thomas Trevor! We'll hang him over that there bough. Will that suit you, Bobby Williams?'

There was a great shriek of approval and delight. All was again bustle and animation. Til tie it

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round his neck?' 'Get out, mun, you don't know how it be done.' 'Iss, I do, Charlie.' 'Now, let me, gwaes, now do let me.' 'You be sure he won't bite?' 'He bain't mad, be he?' 'Suppose we were to tie up his mouth first?'

The puppy still fawned and curried favour, and wagged that sorry tail, and lay down crouching on one side on the ground, sad and sorry in his heart, but still with a little gleam of hope, for now and again he tried to play, and put up his face, praying with those fond friendly eyes. And then at last his gambols and poor efforts for mercy ceased, and he lifted up his wretched voice in one long dismal whine of despair. But he licked the hand of the boy that tied the noose.

He was slowly and gently swung into the air as Lucian went by unheeded; he struggled, and his legs twisted and writhed. The 'healthy' boy pulled the rope, and his friends danced and shouted with glee. As Lucian turned the corner, the poor dan- gling body was swinging to and fro ; the puppy was dying, but he still kicked a little.

Lucian went on his way hastily, and shuddering with disgust. The young of the human creature were really too horrible; they defiled the earth, and made existence unpleasant, as the pulpy growth of a noxious and obscene fungus spoils an agreeable walk. The sight of those malignant little animals with mouths that uttered cruelty and filth, with

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hands dexterous in torture, and feet swift to run all evil errands, had given him a shock and broken up the world of strange thoughts in which he had been dwelling. Yet it was no good being angry with them: it was their nature to be very loathsome. Only he wished they would go about their hideous amusements in their own back gardens where no- body could see them at work; it was too bad that he should be interrupted and offended in a quiet country road. He tried to put the incident out of his mind, as if the whole thing had been a disagree- able story, and the visions amongst which he wished to move were beginning to return, when he was again rudely disturbed. A little girl, a pretty child of eight or nine, was coming along the lane to meet him. She was crying bitterly and looking to left and right, and calling out some word all the time.

'Jack, Jack, Jack! Little Jackie 1 Jack!'

Then she burst into tears afresh, and peered in- to the hedge, and tried to peep through a gate into a field.

'Jackie, Jackie, Jackie!'

She came up to Lucian, sobbing as if her heart would break, and dropped him an old-fashioned curtsy.

'Oh, please sir, have you seen my little Jackie?'

'What do you mean?' said Lucian. 'What is it you've lost?'

'A little dog, please sir. A little tarrier dog with no

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white hair. Father gave me him a month ago, and said I might keep him. Someone did leave the garden gate open this afternoon, and he must 'a got away, sir, and I was so fond of him sir, he was so playful and loving, and I be afraid he be lost.'

She began to call again, without waiting for an answer.

'Jack, Jack, Jack!'

'I'm afraid some boys have got your little dog,' said Lucian. 'They've killed him. You'd better go back home.'

He went on, walking as fast as he could, in his endeavour to get beyond the noise of the child's crying. It distressed him, and he wished to think of other things. He stamped his foot angrily on the ground as he recalled the annoyances of the afternoon, and longed for some hermitage on the mountains, far above the stench and the sound of humanity.

A little farther, and he came to Croeswen, where the road branched off to right and left. There was a triangular plot of grass between the two roads; there the cross had once stood, 'the goodly and famous roode' of the old local chronicle. The words echoed in Lucian's ears as he went by on the right hand. 'There were five steps that did go up to the first pace, and seven steps to the second pace, all of clene hewn ashler. And all above it was most curiously and gloriously wrought with thorowgh

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carved work: in the highest place was the Holy Roode with Christ upon the Cross having Marie on the one syde and John on the other. And below were six splendent and glisteringe archaungels that bore up the roode, and beneath them in their stories were the most fair and noble ymages of the xij Apostles and of divers other Saints and Martirs. And in the lowest storie there was a marvellous ymagerie of divers Beasts, such as oxen and horses and swine, and little dogs and peacocks, all done in the finest and most curious wise, so that they all seemed as if they were caught in a Wood of Thorns, the which is their torment of this life. And here once in the year was a marvellous solemn service, when the parson of Caermaen came out with the singers and all the people, singing the psalm Bene- dicite omma opera as they passed along the road in their procession. And when they stood at the roode the priest did there his service, making cer- tain prayers for the beasts, and then he went up to the first pace and preached a sermon to the people, shewing them that as our Lord Jhu dyed upon the Tree of his deare mercy for us, so we too owe mercy to the beasts his Creatures, for that they are all his poor lieges and silly servants. And that like as the Holy Aungells do their suit to him on high, and the Blessed xij Apostles and the Martirs, and all the Blissful Saints served him aforetime on earth and now praise him in heaven, so also do the beasts

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serve him, though they be in torment of life and below men. For their spirit goeth downward, as Holy Writ teacheth us.'

It was a quaint old record, a curious relic of what the modern inhabitants of Caermaen called the Dark Ages. A few of the stones that had formed the base of the cross still remained in position, grey with age, blotched with black lichen and green moss. The remainder of the famous rood had been used to mend the roads, to build pigsties and domestic offices; it had turned Protestant, in fact. Indeed, if it had remained, the parson of Caermaen would have had no time for the service; the coffee-stall, the Portuguese Missions, the Society for the Con- version of the Jews, and important social duties took up all his leisure. Besides, he thought the whole ceremony unscriptural.

Lucian passed on his way wondering at the strange contrasts of the Middle Ages. How was it that people who could devise so beautiful a service believed in witchcraft, demoniacal possession and obsession, in the incubus and the succubus, and in the Sabbath and in many other horrible absurdities? It seemed astonishing that anybody could even pre- tend to credit such monstrous tales, but there could be no doubt that the dread of old women who rode on broomsticks and liked black cats was once a very genuine terror.

A cold wind blew up from the river at sunset,

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and the scars on his body began to burn and tingle. The pain recalled his ritual to him, and he began to recite it as he walked along. He had cut a branch of thorn from the hedge and placed it next to his skin, pressing the spikes into the flesh with his hand till the warm blood ran down. He felt it was an exquisite and sweet observance for her sake ; and then he thought of the secret golden palace he was building for her, the rare and wonderful city rising in his imagination. As the solemn night be- gan to close about the earth, and the last glimmer of the sun faded from the hills, he gave himself anew to the woman, his body and his mind, all that he was, and all that he had.

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IV

IN the course of the week Lucian again visited Caermaen. He wished to view the amphi- theatre more precisely, to note the exact posi- tion of the ancient walls, to gaze up the valley from certain points within the town, to imprint minutely and clearly on his mind the surge of the hills about the city, and the dark tapestry of the hanging woods. And he lingered in the museum where the relics of the Roman occupation had been stored; he was interested in the fragments of tessellated floors, in the glowing gold of drinking cups, the curious beads of fused and coloured glass, the carved amber-work, the scent-flagons that still re- tained the memory of unctuous odours, the neck- laces, brooches, hairpins of gold and silver, and other intimate objects which had once belonged to Roman ladies. One of the glass flagons, buried in damp earth for many hundred years, had gathered in its dark grave all the splendours of the light, and now shone like an opal with a moonlight glamour and gleams of gold and pale sunset green, and im- perial purple. Then there were the wine jars of red earthenware, the memorial stones from graves, and the heads of broken gods, with fragments of

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occult things used in the secret rites of Mithras. Lucian read on the labels where all these objects were found: in the churchyard, beneath the turf of the meadow, and in the old cemetery near the forest; and whenever it was possible he would make his way to the spot of discovery, and imagine the long darkness that had hidden gold and stone and amber. All these investigations were necessary for the scheme he had in view, so he became for some time quite a familiar figure in the dusty deserted streets and in the meadows by the river. His con- tinual visits to Caermaen were a tortuous puzzle to the inhabitants, who flew to their windows at the sound of a step on the uneven pavements. They were at a loss in their conjectures; his motive for coming down three times a week must of course be bad, but it seemed undiscoverable. And Lucian on his side was at first a good deal put out by occasional encounters with members of the Gervase or Dixon or Colley tribes ; he had often to stop and exchange a few conventional expressions, and such meetings, casual as they were, annoyed and distracted him. He was no longer infuriated or wounded by sneers or contempt or by the cackling laughter of the young people when they passed him on the road (his hat was a shocking one and his untidiness ter- rible), but such incidents were unpleasant just as the smell of a drain was unpleasant, and threw the strange mechanism of his thoughts out of gear for

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the time. Then he had been disgusted by the affair of the boys and the little dog; the loathsomeness of it had quite broken up his fancies. He had read books of modern occultism, and remembered some of the experiments described. The adept, it was alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from the brain to the foot or hand, he could anni- hilate the world around him and pass into another sphere. Lucian wondered whether he could not perform some such operation for his own benefit. Human beings were constantly annoying him and geting in his way; was it not possible to annihilate the race, or at all events to reduce them to wholly insignificant forms? A certain process suggested itself to his mind, a work partly mental and partly physical, and after two or three experiments he found to his astonishment and delight that it was successful. Here, he thought, he had discovered one of the secrets of true magic, this was the key to the symbolic transmutations of the eastern tales. The adept could, in truth, change those who were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant shapes, not as in the letter of the old stories, by transforming the enemy, but by transforming him- self. The magician puts men below him by going up higher, as one looks down on a mountain city from a loftier crag. The stones on the road and such petty obstacles do not trouble the wise man on the great journey, and so Lucian when obliged to

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stop and converse with his fellow-creatures, to listen to their poor pretences and inanities, was no more inconvenienced than when he had to climb an awk- ward stile in the course of a walk. As for the more unpleasant manifestations of humanity: after all they no longer concerned him. Men intent on the great purpose did not suffer the current of their thoughts to be broken by the buzzing of a fly caught in a spider's web, so why should he be per- turbed by the misery of a puppy in the hands of village boys? The fly, no doubt, endured its tor- tures ; lying helpless and bound in those slimy bands, it cried out in its thin voice when the claws of the horrible monster fastened on it; but its dying agonies had never vexed the reverie of a lover. Lucian saw no reason why the boys should offend him more than the spider, or why he should pity the dog more than he pitied the fly. The talk of men and women might be wearisome and inept and often malignant; but he could not imagine an alchemist at the moment of success, a general in the hour of victory, or a financier with a gigantic scheme of swindling well on the market being annoyed by the buzz of insects. The spider is, no doubt, a very terrible brute with a hideous mouth and hairy tiger- like claws when seen through the microscope; but Lucian had taken away the microscope from his eyes. He could now walk the streets of Caermaen confi- dent and secure, without any dread of interruption^

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for at a moment's notice the transformation could be effected. Once Dr. Burrows caught him and made him promise to attend a bazaar that was to be held in aid of the Hungarian Protestants ; Lucian assented the more willingly as he wished to pay a visit to certain curious mounds on a hill a little way out of the town, and he calculated on slinking off from the bazaar early in the afternoon. Lord Beamys was visiting Sir Vivian Ponsonby, a local magnate, and had kindly promised to drive over and declare the bazaar open. It was a solemn mo- ment when the carriage drew up and the great man alighted. He was rather an evil-looking old noble- man, but the clergy and gentry, their wives and sons and daughters welcomed him with a great and unctuous joy. Conversations were broken off in mid-sentence, slow people gaped, not realising why their friends had so suddenly left them, the Mey- ricks came up hot and perspiring in fear lest they should be too late, Miss Colley, a yellow virgin of austere regard, smiled largely, Mrs. Dixon beck- oned wildly with her parasol to the 'girls' who were idly strolling in a distant part of the field, and the archdeacon ran at full speed. The air grew dark with bows, and resonant with the genial laugh of the archdeacon, the cackle of the younger ladies, and the shrill parrot-like voices of the matrons; those smiled who had never smiled before, and on some maiden faces there hovered that look of ador-

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ing ecstasy with which the old masters graced their angels. Then, when all the due rites had been per- formed the company turned and began to walk to- wards the booths of their small Vanity Fair. Lord Beamys led the way with Mrs. Gervase, Mrs. Dixon followed with Sir Vivian Ponsonby, and the multi- tudes that followed cried, saying, 'What a dear old man!' — 'Isn't it kind of him to come all this way?' — 'What a sweet expression, isn't it?' — 'I think he's an old love' — 'One of the good old sort' — 'Real English nobleman' — 'Oh most correct, I assure you ; if a girl gets into trouble, notice to quit at once' — 'Always stands by the Church' — 'Twenty livings in his gift' — 'Voted for the Public Worship Regula- tion Act' — 'Ten thousand acres strictly preserved.' The old lord was leering pleasantly and muttering to himself : 'Some fine gals here. Like the looks of that filly with the pink hat. Ought to see more of her. She'd give Lotty points.'

The pomp swept slowly across the grass: the archdeacon had got hold of Mr. Dixon, and they were discussing the misdeeds of some clergyman in the rural deanery.

'I can scarce credit it,' said Mr. Dixon.

'Oh, I assure you, there can be no doubt. We have witnesses. There can be no question that there was a procession at Llanfihangel on the Sun- day before Easter; the choir and minister went

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round the church, carrying palm branches in their hands.'

'Very shocking.'

'It has distressed the bishop. Martin is a hard- working man enough, and all that, but those sort of things can't be tolerated. The bishop told me that he had set his face against processions.'

'Quite right: the bishop is perfectly right. Pro- cessions are unscriptural.'

'It's the thin end of the wedge, you know, Dixon.'

'Exactly. I have always resisted anything of the kind here.'

'Right. Principiis obsta, you know. Martin is so imprudent. There's a way of doing things.'

The 'scriptural' procession led by Lord Beamys broke up when the stalls were reached and gathered round the nobleman as he declared the bazaar open.

Lucian was sitting on a garden-seat, a little dis- tance off, looking dreamily before him. And all that he saw was a swarm of flies clustering and buzzing about a lump of tainted meat that lay on the grass. The spectacle in no way interrupted the harmony of his thoughts, and soon after the open- ing of the bazaar he went quietly away, walking across the fields in the direction of the ancient mounds he desired to inspect.

All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighbourhood had a peculiar object; he was grad-

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ually levelling to the dust the squalid kraals of mod- ern times, and rebuilding the splendid and golden city of Siluria. All this mystic town was for the delight of his sweetheart and himself; for her the wonderful villas, the shady courts, the magic of tessellated pavements, and the hangings of rich stuffs with their intricate and glowing patterns. Lucian wandered all day through the shining streets, taking shelter sometimes in the gardens beneath the dense and gloomy ilex trees, and listening to the plash and trickle of the fountains. Sometimes he would look out of a window and watch the crowd and colour of the market-place, and now and again a ship came up the river bringing exquisite silks and the merchandise of unknown lands in the Far East. He had made a curious and accurate map of the town he proposed to inhabit, in which every villa was set down and named. He drew his lines to scale with the gravity of a surveyor, and studied the plan till he was able to find his way from house to house on the darkest summer night. On the south- ern slopes about the town there were vineyards, al- ways under a glowing sun, and sometimes he ven- tured to the furthest ridge of the forest, where the wild people still lingered, that he might catch the golden gleam of the city far away, as the light quiv- ered and scintillated on the glittering tiles. And there were gardens outside the city gates where strange and brilliant flowers grew, filling the hot air

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with their odour, and scenting the breeze that blew along the streets. The dull modern life was far away, and people who saw him at this period won- dered what was amiss; the abstraction of his glance was obvious, even to eyes not over-sharp. But men and women had lost all their power of annoyance and vexation; they could no longer even interrupt his thought for a moment. He could listen to Mr. Dixon with apparent attention, while he was in re- ality enraptured by the entreating music of the double flute, played by a girl in the garden of Aval- launius, for that was the name he had taken. Mr. Dixon was innocently discoursing archaeology, giv- ing a brief resume of the views expressed by Mr. Wyndham at the last meeting of the antiquarian society.

'There can be no doubt that the temple of Diana stood there in pagan times,' he concluded, and Lucian assented to the opinion, and asked a few questions which seemed pertinent enough. But all the time the flute notes were sounding in his ears, and the ilex threw a purple shadow on the white pavement before his villa. A boy came forward from the garden; he had been walking amongst the vines and plucking the ripe grapes, and the juice had trickled down over his breast. Standing beside the girl, unashamed in the sunlight, he began to sing one of Sappho's love songs. His voice was as full and rich as a woman's, but purged of all emotion,

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he was an instrument of music in the flesh. Lucian looked at him steadily; the white perfect body shone against the roses and the blue of the sky, clear and gleaming as marble in the glare of the sun. The words he sang burned and flamed with passion, and he was as unconscious of their meaning as the twin pipes of the flute. And the girl was smiling. The vicar shook hands and went on, well pleased with his remarks on the temple of Diana and also with Lucian's polite interest.

'He is by no means wanting in intelligence,' he said to his family. 'A little curious in manner, per- haps, but not stupid.'

'Oh, papa,' said Henrietta, 'don't you think he is rather silly? He can't talk about anything — anything interesting, I mean. And he pretends to know a lot about books, but I heard him say the other day he had never read The Prince of the House of David or Ben-Hur. Fancy I'

The vicar had not interrupted Lucian. The sun still beat upon the roses, and a little breeze bore the scent to his nostrils together with the smell of grapes and vine-leaves. He had become curious in sensation, and as he leant back upon the cushions covered with glistening yellow silk, he was trying to analyse a strange ingredient in the perfume of the air. He had penetrated far beyond the crude dis- tinctions of modern times, beyond the rough: 'there's a smell of roses,' 'there must be sweetbriar

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somewhere.' Modern perceptions of odour were, he knew, far below those of the savage in delicacy. The degraded black fellow of Australia could dis- tinguish odours in a way that made the consumer of 'damper' stare in amazement, but the savage's sensations were all strictly utilitarian. To Lucian as he sat in the cool porch, his feet on the marble, the air came laden with scents as subtly and wonder- fully interwoven and contrasted as the harmonies of a great master. The stained marble of the pavement gave a cool reminiscence of the Italian mountain, the blood-red roses palpitating in the sun- light sent out an odour mystical as passion itself, and there was the hint of inebriation in the perfume of the trellised vines. Besides these, the girl's de- sire and the unripe innocence of the boy were as distinct as benzoin and myrrh, both delicious and exquisite, and exhaled as freely as the scent of the roses. But there was another element that puz- zled him, an aromatic suggestion of the forest. He understood it at last; it was the vapour of the great red pines that grew beyond the garden; their spicy needles were burning in the sun, and the smell was as fragrant as the fume of incense blown from far. The soft entreaty of the flute and the swell- ing rapture of the boy's voice beat on the air to- gether, and Lucian wondered whether there were in the nature of things any true distinction between the impressions of sound and scent and colour.

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The violent blue of the sky, the song, and the odours seemed rather varied symbols of one mystery than distinct entities. He could almost imagine that the boy's innocence was indeed a perfume, and that the palpitating roses had become a sonorous chant.

In the curious silence which followed the last notes, when the boy and girl had passed under the purple ilex shadow, he fell into a reverie. The fancy that sensations are symbols and not realities hovered in his mind, and led him to speculate as to whether they could not actually be transmuted one into another. It was possible, he thought, that a whole continent of knowledge had been undis- covered; the energies of men having been expended in unimportant and foolish directions. Modern in- genuity had been employed on such trifles as locomo- tive engines, electric cables, and cantilever bridges; on elaborate devices for bringing uninteresting people nearer together; the ancients had been al- most as foolish, because they had mistaken the sym- bol for the thing signified. It was not the material banquet which really mattered, but the thought of it; it was almost as futile to eat and take emetics and eat again as to invent telephones and high- pressure boilers. As for some other ancient meth- ods of enjoying life, one might as well set oneself to improve calico printing at once.

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to himself, 'is the true and exquisite science to be found.'

He could imagine a man who was able to live in one sense while he pleased; to whom, for example, every impression of touch, taste, hearing, or seeing should be translated into odour; who at the desired kiss should be ravished with the scent of dark violets, to whom music should be the perfume of a rose-garden at dawn.

When, now and again, he voluntarily resumed the experience of common life, it was that he might return with greater delight to the garden in the city refuge. In the actual world the talk was of Non- conformists, the lodger franchise, and the Stock Exchange; people were constantly reading news- papers, drinking Australian Burgundy, and doing other things equally absurd. They either looked shocked when the fine art of pleasure was mentioned, or confused it with going to musical comedies, drinking bad whisky, and keeping late hours in dis- reputable and vulgar company. He found to his amusement that the profligate were by many degrees duller than the pious, but that the most tedious of all were the persons who preached promiscuity, and called their system of 'pigging' the 'New Morality.'

He went back to the city lovingly, because it was built and adorned for his love. As the metaphy- sicians insist on the consciousness of the ego as the

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implied basis of all thought, so he knew that it was she in whom he had found himself, and through whom and for whom all the true life existed. He felt that Annie had taught him the rare magic which had created the garden of Avallaunius. It was for her that he sought strange secrets and tried to pene- trate the mysteries of sensation, for he could only give her wonderful thoughts and a wonderful life, and a poor body stained with the scars of his wor- ship.

It was with this object, that of making the of- fering of himself a worthy one, that he continually searched for new and exquisite experiences. He made lovers come before him and confess their secrets; he pried into the inmost mysteries of inno- cence and shame, noting how passion and reluctance strive together for the mastery. In the ampitheatre he sometimes witnessed strange entertainments in which such tales as Daphnis and Chloe and The Golden Ass were performed before him. These shows were always given at night-time; a circle of torchbearers surrounded the stage in the centre, and above, all the tiers of seats were dark. He would look up at the soft blue of the summer sky, and at the vast dim mountain hovering like a cloud in the west, and then at the scene illumined by a flaring light, and contrasted with violent shadows. The subdued mutter of conversation in a strange lan- guage rising from bench after bench, swift hissing

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whispers of explanation, now and then a shout or a cry as the interest deepened, the restless tossing of the people as the end drew near, an arm lifted, a cloak thrown back, the sudden blaze of a torch lighting up purple or white or the gleam of gold in the black serried ranks; these were impressions that seemed always amazing. And above, the dusky light of the stars, around, the sweet-scented mead- ows, and the twinkle of lamps from the still city, the cry of the sentries about the walls, the wash of the tide filling the river, and the salt savour of the sea. With such a scenic ornament he saw the tale of Apu- leius represented, heard the names of Fotis and Byrrhaena and Lucius proclaimed, and the deep in- tonation of such sentences as Ecce Veneris hortator et armiger Liber advenlt ultra. The tale went on through all its marvellous adventures, and Lucian left the ampitheatre and walked beside the river where he could hear indistinctly the noise of voices and the singing Latin, and note how the rumour of the stage mingled with the murmur of the shudder- ing reeds and the cool lapping of the tide. Then came the farewell of the cantor, the thunder of ap- plause, the crash of cymbals, the calling of the flutes, and the surge of the wind in the great dark wood. At other times it was his chief pleasure to spend a whole day in a vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond the bridge. A grey stone seat had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and here he often sat

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without motion or gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river swept round the town in a half circle; he could see the swirl of the yellow water, its eddies and minature whirlpools, as the tide poured up from the south. And beyond the river the strong circuit of the walls, and within, the city glittered like a charming piece of mosaic. He freed himself from the obtuse modern view of towns as places where human beings live and make money and rejoice or suffer, for from the standpoint of the mo- ment such facts were wholly impertinent. He knew perfectly well that for his present purpose the tawny sheen and shimmer of the tide was the only fact of importance about the river, and so he regarded the city as a curious work in jewellery. Its radiant marble porticoes, the white walls of the villas, a dome of burning copper, the flash and scintillation of tiled roofs, the quiet red of brickwork, dark groves of ilex, and cypress, and laurel, glowing rose- gardens, and here and there the silver of a fountain, seemed arranged and contrasted with a wonderful art, and the town appeared a delicious ornament, every cube of colour owing its place to the thought and inspiration of the artificer. Lucian, as he gazed from his arbour amongst the trellised vines, lost none of the subtle pleasures of the sight; noting every nuance of colour, he let his eyes dwell for a moment on the scarlet flash of poppies, and then on a glazed roof which in the glance of the sun

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seemed to spout white fire. A square of vines was like some rare green stone ; the grapes were massed so richly amongst the vivid leaves, that even from far off there was a sense of irregular flecks and stains of purple running through the green. The laurel garths were like cool jade; the gardens, where red, yellow, blue and white gleamed together in a mist of heat, had the radiance of opal; the river was a band of dull gold. On every side, as if to en- hance the preciousness of the city, the woods hung dark on the hills ; above, the sky was violet, specked with minute feathery clouds, white as snowflakes. It reminded him of a beautiful bowl in his villa; the ground was of that same brilliant blue, and the artist had fused into the work when it was hot par- ticles of pure white glass.

For Lucian this was a spectacle that enchanted many hours; leaning on one hand, he would gaze at the city glowing in the sunlight till the purple shadows grew down the slopes and the long melo- dious trumpet sounded for the evening watch. Then, as he strolled beneath the trellises, he would see all the radiant facets glimmering out, and the city faded into haze, a white wall shining here and there, and the gardens veiled in a dim, rich glow. On such an evening he would go home with the sense that he had truly lived a day, having received for many hours the most acute impressions of beautiful colour.

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Often he spent the night in the cool court of his villa lying amidst soft cushions heaped upon the marble bench. A lamp stood on the table at his el- bow, its light making the water in the cistern twinkle. There was no sound in the court except the soft continual plashing of the fountain. Through- out these still hours he would meditate, and he be- came more than ever convinced that man could, if he pleased, become lord of his own sensations. This, surely, was the true meaning concealed under the beautiful symbolism of alchemy. Some years be- fore he had read many of the wonderful alchemical books of the later Middle Ages, and had suspected that something other than the turning of lead into gold was intended. This impression was deepened when he looked into Lumen de Lumine by Vaughan, the brother of the Silurist, and he had long puzzled himself in the endeavour to find a reasonable inter- pretation of the hermetic mystery, and of the red powder, 'glistering and glorious as the sun.' And the solution shone out at last, bright and amazing, as he lay quiet in the court of Avallaunius.

He knew that he himself had solved the riddle, that he held in his hand the powder of projection, the philosopher's stone transmuting all it touched to fine gold; the gold of exquisite impressions.