I.

 

Eustace’s career – if career it can be called – certainly dates from that afternoon in the chestnut woods above Ravello. I confess at once that I am a plain, simple man, with no pretensions to literary style. Still, I do flatter myself that I can tell a story without exaggerating, and I have therefore decided to give an unbiased account of the extraordinary events of eight years ago.

Ravello is a delightful place with a delightful little hotel in which we met some charming people. There were the two Miss Robinsons, who had been there for six weeks with Eustace, their nephew, then a boy of about fourteen. Mr. Sandbach had also been there some time. He had held a curacy in the north of England, which he had been compelled to resign on account of ill-health, and while he was recruiting at Ravello he had taken in hand Eustace’s education – which was then sadly deficient – and was endeavoring to fit him for one of our great public schools. Then there was Mr. Leyland, a would-be artist, and, finally, there was the nice landlady, Signora Scafetti, and the nice English-speaking waiter, Emmanuele – though at the time of which I am speaking Emmanuele was away, visiting a sick father.

To this little circle, I, my wife, and my two daughters made, I venture to think, a not unwelcome addition. But though I liked most of the company well enough, there were two of them to whom I did not take at all. They were the artist, Leyland, and the Miss Robinsons’ nephew, Eustace.

Leyland was simply conceited and odious, and, as those qualities will be amply illustrated in my narrative, I need not enlarge upon them here. But Eustace was something besides: he was indescribably repellent.

I am fond of boys as a rule, and was quite disposed to be friendly. I and my daughters offered to take him out – ‘No, walking was such a fag.’ Then I asked him to come and bathe – ‘No, he could not swim.’

“Every English boy should be able to swim,” I said, “I will teach you myself.”

“There, Eustace dear,” said Miss Robinson; “here is a chance for you.”

But he said he was afraid of the water! – a boy afraid! – and of course I said no more.

I would not have minded so much if he had been a really studious boy, but he neither played hard nor worked hard. His favorite occupations were lounging on the terrace in an easy chair and loafing along the high road, with his feet shuffling up the dust and his shoulders stooping forward. Naturally enough, his features were pale, his chest contracted, and his muscles undeveloped. His aunts thought him delicate; what he really needed was discipline.

That memorable day we all arranged to go for a picnic up in the chestnut woods – all, that is, except Janet, who stopped behind to finish her watercolor of the Cathedral – not a very successful attempt, I am afraid.

I wander off into these irrelevant details, because in my mind I cannot separate them from an account of the day; and it is the same with the conversation during the picnic: all is imprinted on my brain together. After a couple of hours’ ascent, we left the donkeys that had carried the Miss Robinsons and my wife, and all proceeded on foot to the head of the valley – Vallone Fontana Caroso is its proper name, I find.

I have visited a good deal of fine scenery before and since, but have found little that has pleased me more. The valley ended in a vast hollow, shaped like a cup, into which radiated ravines from the precipitous hills around. Both the valley and the ravines and the ribs of hill that divided the ravines were covered with leafy chestnut, so that the general appearance was that of a many-fingered green hand, palm upwards, which was clutching convulsively to keep us in its grasp. Far down the valley we could see Ravello and the sea, but that was the only sign of another world.

“Oh, what a perfectly lovely place,” said my daughter Rose. “What a picture it would make!”

“Yes,” said Mr. Sandbach. “Many a famous European gallery would be proud to have a landscape a tithe as beautiful as this upon its walls.”

“On the contrary,” said Leyland, “it would make a very poor picture. Indeed, it is not paintable at all.”

“And why is that?” said Rose, with far more deference than he deserved.

“Look, in the first place,” he replied, “how intolerably straight against the sky is the line of the hill. It would need breaking up and diversifying. And where we are standing the whole thing is out of perspective. Besides, all the coloring is monotonous and crude.”

“I do not know anything about pictures,” I put in, “and I do not pretend to know: but I know what is beautiful when I see it, and I am thoroughly content with this.”

“Indeed, who could help being contented!” said the elder Miss Robinson; and Mr. Sandbach said the same.

“Ah!” said Leyland, “you all confuse the artistic view of Nature with the photographic.”

Poor Rose had brought her camera with her, so I thought this positively rude. I did not wish any unpleasantness: so I merely turned away and assisted my wife and Miss Mary Robinson to put out the lunch – not a very nice lunch.

“Eustace, dear,” said his aunt, “come and help us here.”

He was in a particularly bad temper that morning. He had, as usual, not wanted to come, and his aunts had nearly allowed him to stop at the hotel to vex Janet. But I, with their permission, spoke to him rather sharply on the subject of exercise; and the result was that he had come, but was even more taciturn and moody than usual.

Obedience was not his strong point. He invariably questioned every command, and only executed it grumbling. I should always insist on prompt and cheerful obedience, if I had a son.

“I’m – coming – Aunt – Mary,” he at last replied, and dawdled to cut a piece of wood to make a whistle, taking care not to arrive till we had finished.

“Well, well, sir!” said I, “you stroll in at the end and profit by our labors.” He sighed, for he could not endure being chaffed. Miss Mary, very unwisely, insisted on giving him the wing of the chicken, in spite of all my attempts to prevent her. I remember that I had a moment’s vexation when I thought that, instead of enjoying the sun, and the air, and the woods, we were all engaged in wrangling over the diet of a spoilt boy.

But, after lunch, he was a little less in evidence. He withdrew to a tree trunk, and began to loosen the bark from his whistle. I was thankful to see him employed, for once in a way. We reclined, and took a dolce far niente.

Those sweet chestnuts of the South are puny striplings compared with our robust Northerners. But they clothed the contours of the hills and valleys in a most pleasing way, their veil being only broken by two clearings, in one which we were sitting.

And because these few trees were cut down, Leyland burst into a petty indictment of the proprietor.

“All the poetry is going from Nature,” he cried, “her lakes and marshes are drained, her seas banked up, her forests cut down. Everywhere we see the vulgarity of desolation spreading.”

I have had some experience of estates, and answered that cutting was very necessary for the health of the larger trees. Besides, it was unreasonable to expect the proprietor to derive no income from his lands.

“If you take the commercial side of landscape, you may feel pleasure in the owner’s activity. But to me the mere thought that a tree is convertible into cash is disgusting.”

“I see no reason,” I observed politely, “to despise the gifts of Nature because they are of value.”

It did not stop him. “It is no matter,” he went on, “we are all hopelessly steeped in vulgarity. I do not except myself. It is through us, and to our shame, that the Nereids have left the waters and the Oreads the mountains, that the woods no longer give shelter to Pan.”

“Pan!” cried Mr. Sandbach, his mellow voice filling the valley as if it had been a great green church, “Pan is dead. That is why the woods do not shelter him.” And he began to tell the striking story of the mariners who were sailing near the coast at the time of the birth of Christ, and three times heard a loud voice saying: “The great God Pan is dead.”

“Yes. The great God Pan is dead,” said Leyland. And he abandoned himself to that mock misery in which artistic people are so fond of indulging. His cigar went out, and he had to ask me for a match.

“How very interesting,” said Rose. “I do wish I knew some ancient history.”

“It is not worth your notice,” said Mr. Sandbach. “Eh, Eustace?”

Eustace was finishing his whistle. He looked up, with the irritable frown in which his aunts allowed him to indulge, and made no reply.

The conversation turned to various topics and then died out. It was a cloudless afternoon in May, and the pale green of the young chestnut leaves made a pretty contrast with the dark blue of the sky. We were all sitting at the edge of the small clearing for the sake of the view, and the shade of the chestnut saplings behind us was manifestly insufficient. All sounds died away – at least that is my account: Miss Robinson says that the clamor of the birds was the first sign of uneasiness that she discerned. All sounds died away, except that, far in the distance, I could hear two boughs of a great chestnut grinding together as the tree swayed. The grinds grew shorter and shorter, and finally that sound stopped also. As I looked over the green fingers of the valley, everything was absolutely motionless and still; and that feeling of suspense which one so often experiences when Nature is in repose, began to steal over me.

Suddenly, we were all electrified by the excruciating noise of Eustace’s whistle. I never heard any instrument give forth so ear-splitting and discordant a sound.

“Eustace, dear,” said Miss Mary Robinson, “you might have thought of your poor Aunt Julia’s head.”

Leyland, who had apparently been asleep, sat up.

“It is astonishing how blind a boy is to anything that is elevating or beautiful,” he observed. “I should not have thought he could have found the wherewithal out here to spoil our pleasure like this.”

Then the terrible silence fell upon us again. I was now standing up and watching a catspaw of wind that was running down one of the ridges opposite, turning the light green to dark as it traveled. A fanciful feeling of foreboding came over me; so I turned away, to find to my amazement, that all the others were also on their feet, watching it too.

It is not possible to describe coherently what happened next: but I, for one, am not ashamed to confess that, though the fair blue sky was above me, and the green spring woods beneath me, and the kindest of friends around me, yet I became terribly frightened, more frightened than I ever wish to become again, frightened in a way I never have known either before or after. And in the eyes of the others, too, I saw blank, expressionless fear, while their mouths strove in vain to speak and their hands to gesticulate. Yet, all around us were prosperity, beauty, and peace, and all was motionless, save the catspaw of wind, now traveling up the ridge on which we stood.

Who moved first has never been settled. It is enough to say that in one second we were tearing away along the hillside. Leyland was in front, then Mr. Sandbach, then my wife. But I only saw for a brief moment; for I ran across the little clearing and through the woods and over the undergrowth and the rocks and down the dry torrent beds into the valley below. The sky might have been black as I ran, and the trees short grass, and the hillside a level road; for I saw nothing and heard nothing and felt nothing, since all the channels of sense and reason were blocked. It was not the spiritual fear that one has known at other times, but brutal overmastering physical fear, stopping up the ears, and dropping clouds before the eyes, and filling the mouth with foul tastes. And it was no ordinary humiliation that survived; for I had been afraid, not a man, but as a beast.

 

II.

 

I cannot describe our finish any better than our start; for our fear passed away as it had come, without cause. Suddenly I was able to see, and hear, and cough, and clear my mouth. Looking back, I saw that the others were stopping too; and, in a short time, we were all together, though it was long before we could speak, and longer before we dared to.

No one was seriously injured. My poor wife had sprained her ankle, Leyland had torn one of his nails on a tree trunk, and I myself had scraped and damaged my ear. I never noticed it till I had stopped.

We were all silent, searching one another’s faces. Suddenly Miss Mary Robinson gave a terrible shriek. “Oh, merciful heavens! where is Eustace?” And then she would have fallen, if Mr. Sandbach had not caught her.

“We must go back, we must go back at once,” said my Rose, who was quite the most collected of the party. “But I hope – I feel he is safe.”

Such was the cowardice of Leyland, that he objected. But, finding himself in a minority, and being afraid of being left alone, he gave in. Rose and I supported my poor wife, Mr. Sandbach and Miss Robinson helped Miss Mary, and we returned slowly and silently, taking forty minutes to ascend the path that we had descended in ten.

Our conversation was naturally disjointed, as no one wished to offer an opinion on what had happened. Rose was the most talkative: she startled us all by saying that she had very nearly stopped where she was.

“Do you mean to say that you weren’t – that you didn’t feel compelled to go?” said Mr. Sandbach.

“Oh, of course, I did feel frightened” – she was the first to use the word – “but I somehow felt that if I could stop on it would be quite different, that I shouldn’t be frightened at all, so to speak.” Rose never did express herself clearly: still, it is greatly to her credit that she, the youngest of us, should have held on so long at that terrible time.

“I should have stopped, I do believe,” she continued, “if I had not seen mamma go.”

Rose’s experience comforted us a little about Eustace. But a feeling of terrible foreboding was on us all, as we painfully climbed the chestnut-covered slopes and neared the little clearing. When we reached it our tongues broke loose. There, at the further side, were the remains of our lunch, and close to them, lying motionless on his back, was Eustace.

With some presence of mind I at once cried out: “Hey, you young monkey! jump up!” But he made no reply, nor did he answer when his poor aunts spoke to him. And, to my unspeakable horror, I saw one of those green lizards dart out from under his shirt-cuff as we approached.

We stood watching him as he lay there so silently, and my ears began to tingle in expectation of the outbursts of lamentations and tears.

Miss Mary fell on her knees beside him and touched his hand, which was convulsively entwined in the long grass.

As she did so, he opened his eyes and smiled.

I have often seen that peculiar smile since, both on the possessor’s face and on the photographs of him that are beginning to get into the illustrated papers. But, till then, Eustace had always worn a peevish, discontented frown; and we were all unused to this disquieting smile, which always seemed to be without adequate reason.

His aunts showered kisses on him, which he did not reciprocate, and then there was an awkward pause. Eustace seemed so natural and undisturbed; yet, it he had not had astonishing experiences himself, he ought to have been all the more astonished at our extraordinary behavior. My wife, with ready tact, endeavored to behave as it nothing had happened.

“Well, Mr. Eustace,” she said, sitting down as she spoke, to ease her foot, “how have you been amusing yourself since we have been away?”

“Thank you, Mrs. Tytler, I have been very happy.”

“And where have you been?”

“Here.”

“And lying down all the time, you idle boy?”

“No, no! all the time.”

“What were you doing before?”

“Oh; standing or sitting.”

“Stood and sat doing nothing! Don’t you know the poem ‘Satan finds some mischief still for – ‘“

“Oh, my dear madam, hush! hush!” Mr. Sandbach’s voice broke in; and my wife, naturally mortified by the interruption, said no more and moved away. I was surprised to see Rose immediately take her place, and, with more freedom than she generally displayed, run her fingers through the boy’s tousled hair.

“Eustace! Eustace!” she said, hurriedly, “tell me everything – every single thing.”

Slowly he sat up – till then he had lain on his back.

“Oh Rose,” he whispered, and, my curiosity being aroused, I moved nearer to hear what he was going to say. As I did so, I caught sight of some goats’ footmarks in the moist earth beneath the trees.

“Apparently you have had a visit from some goats,” I observed. “I had no idea they fed up here.”

Eustace laboriously got on to his feet and came to see; and when he saw the footmarks he lay down and rolled on them, as a dog rolls in dirt.

After that there was a grave silence, broken at length by the solemn speech of Mr. Sandbach.

“My dear friends,” he said, “it is best to confess the truth bravely. I know that what I am going to say now is what you are all now feeling. The Evil One has been very near us in bodily form. Time may yet discover some injury that he has wrought among us. But, at present, for myself at all events, I wish to offer up thanks for a merciful deliverance.”

With that he knelt down, and, as the others knelt, I knelt too, though I do not believe in the Devil being allowed to assail us in visible form, as I told Mr. Sandbach afterwards. Eustace came too, and knelt quietly enough between his aunts after they had beckoned to him. But when it was over he at once got up, and began hunting for something.

“Why! Someone has cut my whistle in two,” he said. (I had seen Leyland with an open knife in his hand – a superstitious act which I could hardly approve.)

“Well, it doesn’t matter,” he continued.

“And why doesn’t it matter?” said Mr. Sandbach, who has ever since tried to entrap Eustace into an account of that mysterious hour.

“Because I don’t want it any more.”

“Why?”

At that he smiled; and, as no one seemed to have anything more to say, I set off as fast as I could through the wood, and hauled up a donkey to carry my poor wife home. Nothing occurred in my absence, except that Rose had asked Eustace to tell her what had happened; and he, this time, had turned away his head, and had not answered her a single word.

As soon as I returned, we all set off. Eustace walked with difficulty, almost with pain, so that, when we reached the other donkeys, his aunts wished him to mount one of them and ride all the way home. I make it a rule never to interfere between relatives, but I put my foot down at this. As it turned out, I was perfectly right, for the healthy exercise, I suppose, began to thaw Eustace’s sluggish blood and loosen his stiffened muscles. He stepped out manfully, for the first time in his life, holding his head up and taking deep drafts of air into his chest. I observed with satisfaction to Miss Mary Robinson, that Eustace was at last taking some pride in his personal appearance.

Mr. Sandbach sighed, and said that Eustace must be carefully watched, for we none of us understood him yet. Miss Mary Robinson being very much – over much, I think – guided by him, sighed too.

“Come, come, Miss Robinson,” I said, “there’s nothing wrong with Eustace. Our

experiences are mysterious, not his. He was astonished at our sudden departure, that’s why he was so strange when we returned. He’s right enough – improved, if anything.”

“And is the worship of athletics, the cult of insensate activity, to be counted as an improvement?” put in Leyland, fixing a large, sorrowful eye on Eustace, who had stopped to scramble on to a rock to pick some cyclamen. “The passionate desire to rend from Nature the few beauties that have been still left her – that is to be counted as an improvement too?”

It is mere waste of time to reply to such remarks, especially when they come from an unsuccessful artist, suffering from a damaged finger. I changed the conversation by asking what we should say at the hotel. After some discussion, it was agreed that we should say nothing, either there or in our letters home. Importunate truthtelling, which brings only bewilderment and discomfort to the hearers, is, in my opinion, a mistake; and, after a long discussion, I managed make Mr. Sandbach acquiesce in my view.

Eustace did not share in our conversation. He was racing about, like a real boy, in the wood to the right. A strange feeling of shame prevented us from openly mentioning our fright to him. Indeed, it seemed almost reasonable to conclude that it had made but little impression on him. So it disconcerted us when he bounded back with an armful of flowering acanthus, calling out:

“Do you suppose Gennaro’ll be there when we get back?”

Gennaro was the stop-gap waiter, a clumsy, impertinent fisher-lad, who had been had up from Minori in the absence of the nice English-speaking Emmanuele. It was to him that we owed our scrappy lunch; and I could not conceive why Eustace desired to see him, unless it was to make mock with him of our behavior.

“Yes, of course he will be there,” said Miss Robinson. “Why do you ask, dear?”

“Oh, I thought I’d like to see him.”

“And why?” snapped Mr. Sandbach.

“Because, because I do, I do; because, because I do.” He danced away into the darkening wood to the rhythm of his words.

“This is very extraordinary,” said Mr. Sandbach. “Did he like Gennaro before?”

“Gennaro has only been here two days,” said Rose, “and I know that they haven’t spoken to each other a dozen times.”

Each time Eustace returned from the wood his spirits were higher. Once he came whooping down on us as a wild Indian, and another time he made believe to be a dog . The last time he came back with a poor dazed hare, too frightened to move, sitting on his arm. He was getting too uproarious, I thought; and we were all glad to leave the wood, and start upon the steep staircase path that leads down into Ravello. It was late and turning dark; and we made all the speed we could, Eustace scurrying in front of us like a goat.

Just where the staircase path debouches on the white high road, the next extraordinary incident of this extraordinary day occurred. Three old women were standing by the wayside. They, like ourselves, had come down from the woods, and they were resting their heavy bundles of fuel on the low parapet of the road. Eustace stopped in front of them, and, after a moment’s deliberation, stepped forward and – kissed the left-hand one on the cheek!

“My good fellow!” exclaimed Mr. Sandbach, “are you quite crazy?”

Eustace said nothing, but offered the old woman some of his flowers, and then hurried on. I looked back; and the old woman’s companions seemed as much astonished at the proceeding as we were. But she herself had put the flowers in her bosom, and was murmuring blessings.

This salutation of the old lady was the first example of Eustace’s strange behavior, and we were both surprised and alarmed. It was useless talking to him, for he either made silly replies, or else bounded away without replying at all.

He made no reference on the way home to Gennaro, and I hoped that that was forgotten. But, when we came to the Piazza, in front of the Cathedral, he screamed out: “Gennaro! Gennaro!” at the top of his voice, and began running up the little alley that led to the hotel. Sure enough, there was Gennaro at the end of it, with his arms and legs sticking out of the nice little English-speaking waiter’s dress suit, and a dirty fisherman’s cap on his head – for, as the poor landlady truly said, however much she superintended his toilette, he always managed to introduce something incongruous into it before he had done.

Eustace sprang to meet him, and leapt right up into his arms, and put his own arms round his neck. And this in the presence, not only of us, but also of the landlady, the chambermaid, the facchino, and of two American ladies who were coming for a few days’ visit to the little hotel.

I always make a point of behaving pleasantly to Italians, however little they may deserve it; but this habit of promiscuous intimacy was perfectly intolerable, and could only lead to familiarity and mortification for all. Taking Miss Robinson aside, I asked her permission to speak seriously to Eustace on the subject of intercourse with social inferiors. She granted it; but I determined to wait till the absurd boy had calmed down a little from the excitement of the day. Meanwhile, Gennaro, instead of attending to the wants of the two new ladies, carried Eustace into the house, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Ho capito,” I heard him say as he passed me. ‘Ho capito’ is the Italian for ‘ I have understood’; but, as Eustace had not spoken to him, I could not see the force of the remark. It served to increase our bewilderment, and, by the time we sat down at the dinner table, our imaginations and our tongues were alike exhausted.

I omit from this account the various comments that were made, as few of them seem worthy of being recorded. But, for three or four hours, seven of us were pouring forth our bewilderment in a stream of appropriate and inappropriate exclamations. Some traced a connection between our behavior in the afternoon and the behavior of Eustace now. Others saw no connection at all. Mr. Sandbach still held to the possibility of infernal influences, and also said that he ought to have a doctor. Leyland only saw the development of “that unspeakable Philistine, the boy.” Rose maintained, to my surprise, that everything was excusable; while I began to see that the young gentleman wanted a sound thrashing. The poor Miss Robinsons swayed helplessly about between these diverse opinions; inclining now to careful supervision, now to acquiescence, now to corporal chastisement, now to Eno’s Fruit Salt.

Dinner passed off fairly well, though Eustace was terribly fidgety, Gennaro as usual dropping the knives and spoons, and hawking and clearing his throat. He only knew a few words of English, and we were all reduced to Italian for making known our wants. Eustace, who had picked up a little somehow, asked for some oranges. To my annoyance, Gennaro, in his answer made use of the second person singular – a form only used when addressing those who are both intimates and equals. Eustace had brought it on himself; but an impertinence of this kind was an affront to all, and I was determined to speak, and to speak at once.

When I heard him clearing the table I went in, and, summoning up my Italian, or rather Neapolitan – the Southern dialect- are execrable – I said, “Gennaro! I heard you address Signor Eustace with ‘Tu.’”

“It is true.”

“You are not right. You must use ‘Lei’ or ‘Voi’ – more polite forms. And remember that, though Signor Eustace is sometimes silly and foolish – this afternoon for example – yet you must always behave respectfully to him; for he is a young English gentleman, and you are a poor Italian fisherboy.”

I know that speech sounds terribly snobbish, but in Italian one can say things that one would never dream of saying in English. Besides, it is no speaking delicately to persons of that class. Unless you put things plainly, they take a vicious pleasure in misunderstanding you.

An honest English fisherman would have landed me one in the eye in a minute for such a remark, but the wretched down-trodden Italians have no pride. Gennaro only sighed, and said: “It is true.”

“Quite so,” I said, and turned to go. To my indignation I heard him add: “But sometimes it is not important.”

“What do you mean?” I shouted.

He came close up to me with horrid gesticulating fingers.

“Signor Tytler, I wish to say this. If Eustazio asks me to call him ‘Voi,’ I will call

him ‘Voi.’ Otherwise, no.”

With that he seized up a tray of dinner things, and fled from the room with them; and I heard two more wine-glasses go on the courtyard floor.

I was now fairly angry, and strode out to interview Eustace. But he had gone to bed, and the landlady, to whom I also wished to speak, was engaged. After more vague wonderings, obscurely expressed owing to the presence of Janet and the two American ladies, we all went to bed, too, after a harassing and most extraordinary day.

 

III.

 

But the day was nothing to the night.

I suppose I had slept for about four hours, when I woke suddenly thinking I heard a noise in the garden. And immediately, before my eyes were open, cold terrible fear seized me – not fear of something that was happening, like the fear in the wood, but fear of something that might happen.

Our room was on the first floor, looking out on to the garden – or terrace, it was rather: a wedge-shaped block of ground covered with roses and vines, and intersected with little asphalt paths. It was bounded on the small side by the house; round the two long sides ran a wall, only three feet above the terrace level, but with a good twenty feet drop over it into the olive yards, for the ground fell very precipitously away.

Trembling all over I stole to the window. There, pattering up and down the asphalt paths, was something white. I was too much alarmed to see clearly; and in the uncertain light of the stars the thing took all manner of curious shape. Now it was a great dog, now an enormous white bat, now a mass of quickly traveling cloud. It would bounce like a ball, or take short flights like a bird, or glide slowly like a wraith. It gave no sound save the pattering sound of what, after all, must be human feet. And at last the obvious explanation forced itself upon my disordered mind; and I realized that Eustace had got out of bed, and that we were in for something more.

I hastily dressed myself, and went down into the dining-room which opened upon the terrace. The door was already unfastened. My terror had almost entirely passed away, but for quite five minutes I struggled with a curious cowardly feeling, which bade me not interfere with the poor strange boy, but leave him to his ghostly patterings, and merely watch him from the window, to see he took no harm.

But better impulses prevailed and, opening the door, I called out: “Eustace! what on earth are you doing? Come in at once.”

He stopped his antics, and said: “I hate my bedroom. I could not stop in it, it is too small.”

“Come! come! I’m tired of affectation. You’ve never complained of it before.”

“Besides I can’t see anything – no flowers, no leaves, no sky: only a stone wall.” The outlook of Eustace’s room certainly was limited; but, as I told him, he had never complained of it before.

“Eustace, you talk like a child. Come in! Prompt obedience, if you please.”

He did not move.

“Very well: I shall carry you in by force,” I added, and made a few steps towards him. But I was soon convinced of the futility of pursuing a boy through a tangle of asphalt paths and went in instead, to call Mr. Sandbach and Leyland to my aid.

When I returned with them he was worse than ever. He would not even answer us when we spoke, but began singing and chattering to himself in a most alarming way.

“It’s a case for the doctor now,” said Mr. Sandbach, gravely tapping his forehead.

He had stopped his running and was singing, first low, then loud – singing five-finger exercises, scales, hymn tunes, scraps of Wagner – anything that came into his head. His voice – a very untuneful voice – grew stronger and stronger, and he ended with a tremendous shout which boomed like a gun among the mountains, and awoke everyone who was still sleeping in the hotel. My poor wife and the two girls appeared at their respective windows, and the American ladies were heard violently ringing their bell.

“Eustace,” we all cried, “stop! stop, dear boy, and come into the house.”

He shook his head, and started off again – talking this time. Never have I listened to such an extraordinary speech. At any other time it would have been ludicrous, for here was a boy, with no sense of beauty and a puerile command of words, attempting to tackle themes which the greatest poets have found almost beyond their power. Eustace Robinson, aged fourteen, was standing in his nightshirt saluting, praising, and blessing, the great forces and manifestations of Nature.

He spoke first of night and the stars and planets above his head, of the swarms of fireflies below him, of the invisible sea below the fireflies, of the great rocks covered with anemones and shells that were slumbering in the invisible sea. He spoke of the rivers and waterfalls, of the ripening bunches of grapes, of the smoking cone of Vesuvius and the hidden fire-channels that made the smoke, of the myriads of lizards who were lying curled up in the crannies of the sultry earth, of the showers of white rose-leaves that were tangled in his hair. And then he spoke of the rain and the wind by which all things are changed, of the air through which all things live, and of the woods in which all things can be hidden.

Of course, it was all absurdly high-faluting: yet I could have kicked Leyland for audibly observing that it was ‘a diabolical caricature of all that was most holy and beautiful in life.’

“And then,” – Eustace was going on in the pitiable conversational doggerel which was his only mode of expression – “and then there are men, but I can’t make them out so well.” He knelt down by the parapet, and rested his head on his arms.

“Now’s the time,” whispered Leyland. I hate stealth, hut we darted forward and endeavored to catch hold of him from behind. He was away in a twinkling, but turned round at once to look at us. As far as I could see in the starlight, he was crying. Leyland rushed at him again, and we tried to corner him among the asphalt paths, hut without the slightest approach to success.

We returned, breathless and discomfited, leaving him to his madness in the further

corner of the terrace. But my Rose had an inspiration.

“Papa,” she called from the window, “if you get Gennaro, he might he able to catch him for you.”

I had no wish to ask a favor of Gennaro, but, as the landlady had by now appeared on the scene, I begged her to summon him from the charcoal-bin in which he slept, and make him try what he could do.

She soon returned, and was shortly followed by Gennaro, attired in a dress coat, without either waistcoat, shirt, or vest, and a ragged pair of what had been trousers, cut short above the knees for purposes of wading. The landlady, who had quite picked up English ways, rebuked him for the incongruous and even indecent appearance which he presented.

“I have a coat and I have trousers. What more do you desire?”

“Never mind, Signora Scafetti,” I put in. “As there are no ladies here, it is not of the slightest consequence.” Then, turning to Gennaro, I said: “The aunts of Signor

Eustace wish you to fetch him into the house.”

He did not answer.

“Do you hear me? He is not well. I order you to fetch him into the house.”

“Fetch! fetch!” said Signora Scafetti, and shook him roughly by the arm.

“Eustazio is well where he is.”

“Fetch! fetch!” Signora Scafetti screamed, and let loose a flood of Italian, most of which, I am glad to say, I could not follow. I glanced up nervously at the girls’ window, but they hardly know as much as I do, and I am thankful to say that none of us caught one word of Gennaro’s answer.

The two yelled and shouted at each other for quite ten minutes, at the end of which Gennaro rushed hack to his charcoal-bin and Signora Scafetti burst into tears, as well she might, for she greatly valued her English guests .

“He says,” she sobbed, “that Signor Eustace is well where he is, and that he will not fetch him. I can do no more.”

But I could, for, in my stupid British way, I have got some insight into the Italian character. I followed Mr. Gennaro to his place of repose, and found him wriggling down on a dirty sack.

“I wish you to fetch Signor Eustace to me,” I began.

He hurled at me an unintelligible reply.

“If you fetch him, I will give you this.” And out of my pocket I took a new ten lira note.

This time he did not answer.

“This note is equal to ten lire in silver,” I continued, for I knew that the poor-class Italian is unable to conceive of a single large sum.

“I know it.”

“That is, two hundred soldi.”

“I do not desire them. Eustazio is my friend.”

I put the note into my pocket.

“Besides, you would not give it me.”

“I am an Englishman. The English always do what they promise.”

“That is true.” It is astonishing how the most dishonest of nations trust us. Indeed they often trust us more than we trust one another. Gennaro knelt up on his sack. It was too dark to see his face, but I could feel his warm garlicky breath coming out in gasps, and I knew that the eternal avarice of the South had laid hold upon him.

“I could not fetch Eustazio to the house. He might die there.”

“You need not do that,” I replied patiently. “You need only bring him to me; and I will stand outside in the garden.” And to this, as if it were something quite different, the pitiable youth consented.

“But give me first the ten lire.”

“No “ – for I knew the kind of person with which I had to deal. Once faithless, always faithless.

We returned to the terrace, and Gennaro, without a single word, pattered off towards the pattering that could be heard at the remoter end. Mr. Sandbach, Leyland, and myself moved away a little from the house, and stood in the shadow of the white climbing roses, practically invisible.

We heard “Eustazio” called, followed by absurd cries of pleasure from the poor boy. The pattering ceased, and we heard them talking. Their voices got nearer, and presently I could discern them through the creep the grotesque figure of the young man, and the slim little white-robed boy. Gennaro had his arm round Eustace’s neck, and Eustace was talking away in his fluent, slipshod Italian.

“I understand almost everything,” I heard him say. “The trees, hills, stars, water, I can see all. But isn’t it odd! I can’t make out men a bit. Do you know what I mean?”

“Ho capito,” said Gennaro gravely, and took his arm off Eustace’s shoulder. But I

made the new note crackle in my pocket; and he heard it. He stuck his hand out with a jerk; and the unsuspecting Eustace gripped it in his own.

“It is odd!” Eustace went on – they were quite close now – “It almost seems as if – as if –”

I darted out and caught hold of his arm, and Leyland got hold of the other arm, and Mr. Sandbach hung on to his feet. He gave shrill heart-piercing screams; and the white roses, which were falling early that year, descended in showers on him as we dragged him into the house.

As soon as we entered the house he stopped shrieking; but floods of tears silently burst forth, and spread over his upturned face.

“Not to my room,” he pleaded. “It is so small.”

His infinitely dolorous look filled me with strange pity, but what could I do? Besides, his window was the only one that had bars to it.

“Never mind, dear boy,” said kind Mr. Sandbach. “I will bear you company till the morning.”

At this his convulsive struggles began again. “Oh, please, not that. Anything but that. I will promise to lie still and not to cry more than I can help, if I am left alone.”

So we laid him on the bed, and drew the sheets over him, and left him sobbing bitterly, and saying: “I nearly saw everything, and now I can see nothing at all.”

We informed the Miss Robinsons of all that had happened, and returned to the dining-room, where we found Signora Scafetti and Gennaro whispering together. Mr. Sandbach got pen and paper, and began writing to the English doctor at Naples. I at once drew out the note, and flung it down on the table to Gennaro.

“Here is your pay,” I said sternly, for I was thinking of the Thirty Pieces of Silver.

“Thank you very much, sir,” said Gennaro, and grabbed it.

He was going off, when Leyland, whose interest and indifference were always equally misplaced, asked him what Eustace had meant by saying ‘he could not make out men a bit.’

“I cannot say. Signor Eustazio” (I was glad to observe a little deference at last) “has a subtle brain. He understands many things.”

“But I heard you say you understood,” Leyland persisted.

“I understand, but I cannot explain. I am a poor Italian fisher-lad. Yet, listen: I will try.” I saw to my alarm that his manner was changing, and tried to stop him. But he sat down on the edge of the table and started off, with some absolutely incoherent remarks.

“It is sad,” he observed at last. “What has happened is very sad. But what can I do? I am poor. It is not I.”

I turned away in contempt. Leyland went on asking questions. He wanted to know who it was that Eustace had in his mind when he spoke.

“That is easy to say,” Gennaro gravely answered. “It is you, it is I. It is all in this house, and many outside it. If he wishes for mirth, we discomfort him. If he asks to be alone, we disturb him. He longed for a friend, and found none for fifteen years. Then he found me, and the first night I – I who have been in the woods and understood things too – betray him to you, and send him in to die. But what could I do?”

“Gently, gently,” said I.

“Oh, assuredly he will die. He will lie in the small room all night, and in the morning he will be dead. That I know for certain.”

“There, that will do,” said Mr. Sandbach. “I shall be sitting with him.”

“Filomena Giusti sat all night with Caterina, but Caterina was dead in the morning. They would not let her out, though I begged, and prayed, and cursed, and beat the door, and climbed the wall. They were ignorant fools, and thought I wished to carry her away. And in the morning she was dead.”

“What is all this?” I asked Signora Scafetti.

“All kinds of stories will get about,” she replied, “and he, least of anyone, has reason to repeat them.”

“And I am alive now,” he went on, “because I had neither parents nor relatives nor

friends, so that, when the first night came, I could run through the woods, and climb the rocks, and plunge into the water, until I had accomplished my desire!”

We heard a cry from Eustace’s room – a faint but steady sound, like the sound of wind in a distant wood heard by one standing in tranquility.

“That,” said Gennaro, “was the last noise of Caterina. I was hanging on to her window then, and it blew out past me.”

And, lilting up his hand, in which my ten lira note was safely packed, he solemnly cursed Mr. Sandbach, and Leyland, and myself, and Fate, because Eustace was dying in the upstairs room. Such is the working of the Southern mind; and I verily believe that he would not have moved even then, had not Leyland, that unspeakable idiot, upset the lamp with his elbow. It was a patent self-extinguishing lamp, bought by Signora Scafetti, at my special request, to replace the dangerous thing that she was using. The result was, that it went out; and the mere physical change from light to darkness had more power over the ignorant animal nature of Gennaro than the most obvious dictates of logic and reason. I felt, rather than saw, that he had left the room and shouted out to Mr. Sandbach: “Have you got the key of Eustace’s room in your pocket?” But Mr. Sandbach and Leyland were both on the floor, having mistaken each other for Gennaro, and some more precious time was wasted in finding a match. Mr. Sandbach had only just time to say that he had left the key in the door, in case the Miss Robinsons wished to pay Eustace a visit, when we heard a noise on the stairs, and there was Gennaro, carrying Eustace down.

We rushed out and blocked up the passage, and they lost heart and retreated to the upper landing.

“Now they are caught,” cried Signora Scafetti. “There is no other way out.”

We were cautiously ascending the staircase, when there was a terrific scream from my wife’s room, followed by a heavy thud on the asphalt path. They had leapt out of her window.

I reached the terrace just in time to see Eustace jumping over the parapet of the garden wall. This time I knew for certain he would be killed. But he alighted in an olive tree, looking like a great white moth, and from the tree he slid on to the earth. And as soon as his bare feet touched the clods of earth he uttered a strange loud cry, such as I should not have thought the human voice could have produced, and disappeared among the trees below.

“He has understood and he is saved,” cried Gennaro, who was still sitting on the asphalt path. “Now, instead of dying he will live!”

“And you, instead of keeping the ten lire, will give them up.” I retorted, for at this

theatrical remark I could contain myself no longer.

“The ten lire are mine,” he hissed back, in a scarcely audible voice. He clasped his hand over his breast to protect his ill-gotten gains, and, as he did so, he swayed forward and fell upon his face on the path. He had not broken any limbs, and a leap like that would never have killed an Englishman, for the drop was not great. But those miserable Italians have no stamina. Something had gone wrong inside him, and he was dead.

The morning was still far off, but the morning breeze had begun, and more rose leaves fell on us as we carried him in. Signora Scafetti burst into screams at the sight of the dead body, and, far down the valley towards the sea, there still resounded the shouts and the laughter of the escaping boy.

My pedometer told me that I was twenty-five; and, though it is a shocking thing to stop walking, I was so tired that I sat down on a milestone to rest. People outstripped me, jeering as they did so, but I was too apathetic to feel resentful, and even when Miss Eliza Dimbleby, the great educationist, swept past, exhorting me to persevere, I only smiled and raised my hat.

 At first I thought I was going to be like my brother, whom I had had to leave by the roadside a year or two round the corner. He had wasted his breath on singing, and his strength on helping others. But I had traveled more wisely, and now it was only the monotony of the highway that oppressed me – dust under foot and brown crackling hedges on either side, ever since I could remember.

 And I had already dropped several things – indeed, the road behind was strewn with the things we all had dropped; and the white dust was settling down on them, so that already they looked no better than stones. My muscles were so weary that I could not even bear the weight of those things I still carried. I slid off the milestone into the road, and lay there prostrate, with my face to the great parched hedge, praying that I might give up.

 A little puff of air revived me. It seemed to come from the hedge; and, when I opened my eyes, there was a glint of light through the tangle of boughs and dead leaves. The hedge could not be as thick as usual. In my weak, morbid state, I longed to force my way in, and see what was on the other side. No one was in sight, or I should not have dared to try. For we of the road do not admit in conversation that there is another side at all.

 I yielded to the temptation, saying to myself that I would come back in a minute. The thorns scratched my face, and I had to use my arms as a shield, depending on my feet alone to push me forward. Halfway through I would have gone back, for in the passage all the things I was carrying were scraped off me, and my clothes were torn. But I was so wedged that return was impossible, and I had to wriggle blindly forward, expecting every moment that my strength would fail me, and that I should perish in the undergrowth.

 Suddenly cold water closed round my head, and I seemed sinking down forever. I had fallen out of the hedge into a deep pool. I rose to the surface at last, crying for help, and I heard someone on the opposite bank laugh and say: “Another!” And then I was twitched out and laid panting on the dry ground.

 Even when the water was out of my eyes, I was still dazed, for I had never been in so large a space, nor seen such grass and sunshine. The blue sky was no longer a strip, and beneath it the earth had risen grandly into hills – clean, bare buttresses, with beech trees in their folds, and meadows and clear pools at their feet. But the hills were not high, and there was in the landscape a sense of human occupation – so that one might have called it a park, or garden, if the words did not imply a certain triviality and constraint.

 As soon as I got my breath, I turned to my rescuer and said:

 “Where does this place lead to?”

 “Nowhere, thank the Lord!” said he, and laughed. He was a man of fifty or sixty – just the kind of age we mistrust on the road – but there was no anxiety in his manner, and his voice was that of a boy of eighteen.

 “But it must lead somewhere!” I cried, too much surprised at his answer to thank him for saving my life.

 “He wants to know where it leads!” he shouted to some men on the hillside, and they laughed back, and waved their caps.

 I noticed then that the pool into which I had fallen was really a moat which bent round to the left and to the right, and that the hedge followed it continually. The hedge was green on this side – its roots showed through the clear water, and fish swam about in them – and it was wreathed over with dog-roses and traveler’s joy. But it was a barrier, and in a moment I lost all pleasure in the grass, the sky, the trees, the happy men and women, and realized that the place was but a prison, for all its beauty and extent.

 We moved away from the boundary, and then followed a path almost parallel to it, across the meadows. I found it difficult walking, for I was always trying to out-distance my companion, and there was no advantage in doing this if the place led nowhere. I had never kept step with anyone since I left my brother.

 I amused him by stopping suddenly and saying disconsolately, “This is perfectly terrible. One cannot advance: one cannot progress. Now we of the road –”

 “Yes. I know.”

 “I was going to say, we advance continually.”

 “I know.”

 “We are always learning, expanding, developing. Why, even in my short life I have seen a great deal of advance – the Transvaal War, the Fiscal Question, Christian Science, Radium. Here for example –”

 I took out my pedometer, but it still marked twenty-five, not a degree more.

 “Oh, it’s stopped! I meant to show you. It should have registered all the time I was walking with you. But it makes me only twenty-five.”

 “Many things don’t work in here,” he said. “One day a man brought in a Lee-Metford, and that wouldn’t work.”

 “The laws of science are universal in their application. It must be the water in the moat that has injured the machinery. In normal conditions everything works. Science and the spirit of emulation – those are the forces that have made us what we are.”

 I had to break off and acknowledge the pleasant greetings of people whom we passed. Some of them were singing, some talking, some engaged in gardening, hay-making, or other rudimentary industries. They all seemed happy; and I might have been happy too, if I could have forgotten that the place led nowhere.

 I was startled by a young man who came sprinting across our path, took a little fence in fine style, and went tearing over a plowed field till he plunged into a lake, across which he began to swim. Here was true energy, and I exclaimed: “A cross-country race! Where are the others?”

 “There are no others,” my companion replied; and, later on, when we passed some long grass from which came the voice of a girl singing exquisitely to herself, he said again: “There are no others.” I was bewildered at the waste in production, and murmured to myself, “What does it all mean?”

 He said: “It means nothing but itself” – and he repeated the words slowly, as if I were a child.

 “I understand,” I said quietly, “but I do not agree. Every achievement is worthless unless it is a link in the chain of development. And I must not trespass on your kindness any longer. I must get back somehow to the road, and have my pedometer mended.”

 “First, you must see the gates,” he replied, “for we have gates, though we never use them.”

 I yielded politely, and before long we reached the moat again, at a point where it was spanned by a bridge. Over the bridge was a big gate, as white as ivory, which was fitted into a gap in the boundary hedge. The gate opened outwards, and I exclaimed in amazement, for from it ran a road – just such a road as I had left – dusty under foot, with brown crackling hedges on either side as far as the eye could reach.

 “That’s my road!” I cried.

 He shut the gate and said: “But not your part of the road. It is through this gate that humanity went out countless ages ago, when it was first seized with the desire to walk.”

 I denied this, observing that the part of the road I myself had left was not more than two miles off. But with the obstinacy of his years he repeated: “It is the same road. This is the beginning, and though it seems to run straight away from us, it doubles so often, that it is never far from our boundary and sometimes touches it.” He stooped down by the moat, and traced on its moist margin an absurd figure like a maze. As we walked back through the meadows, I tried to convince him of his mistake.

 “The road sometimes doubles, to be sure, but that is part of our discipline. Who can doubt that its general tendency is onward? To what goal we know not – it may be to some mountain where we shall touch the sky, it may be over precipices into the sea. But that it goes forward – who can doubt that? It is the thought of that that makes us strive to excel, each in his own way, and gives us an impetus which is lacking with you. Now that man who passed us – it’s true that he ran well, and jumped well, and swam well; but we have men who can run better, and men who can jump better, and who can swim better. Specialization has produced results which would surprise you. Similarly, that girl –”

 Here I interrupted myself to exclaim: “Good gracious me! I could have sworn it was Miss Eliza Dimbleby over there, with her feet in the fountain!”

 He believed that it was.

 “Impossible! I left her on the road, and she is due to lecture this evening at Tunbridge Wells. Why, her train leaves Cannon Street in – of course my watch has stopped like everything else. She is the last person to be here.”

 “People always are astonished at meeting each other. All kinds come through the hedge, and come at all times – when they are drawing ahead in the race, when they are lagging behind, when they are left for dead. I often stand near the boundary listening to the sounds of the road – you know what they are – and wonder if anyone will turn aside. It is my great happiness to help someone out of the moat, as I helped you. For our country fills up slowly, though it was meant for all mankind.”

 “Mankind have other aims,” I said gently, for I thought him well-meaning; “and I must join them.” I bade him good evening, for the sun was declining, and I wished to be on the road by nightfall. To my alarm, he caught hold of me, crying: “You are not to go yet!” I tried to shake him off, for we had no interests in common, and his civility was becoming irksome to me. But for all my struggles the tiresome old man would not let go; and, as wrestling is not my specialty, I was obliged to follow him.

 It was true that I could have never found alone the place where I came in, and I hoped that, when I had seen the other sights about which he was worrying, he would take me back to it. But I was determined not to sleep in the country, for I mistrusted it, and the people too, for all their friendliness. Hungry though I was, I would not join them in their evening meals of milk and fruit, and, when they gave me flowers, I flung them away as soon as I could do so unobserved. Already they were lying down for the night like cattle – some out on the bare hillside, others in groups under the beeches. In the light of an orange sunset I hurried on with my unwelcome guide, dead tired, faint for want of food, but murmuring indomitably: “Give me life, with its struggles and victories, with its failures and hatreds, with its deep moral meaning and its unknown goal!”

 At last we came to a place where the encircling moat was spanned by another bridge, and where another gate interrupted the line of the boundary hedge. It was different from the first gate; for it was half transparent like horn, and opened inwards. But through it, in the waning light, I saw again just such a road as I had left – monotonous, dusty, with brown crackling hedges on either side, as far as the eye could reach.

 I was strangely disquieted at the sight, which seemed to deprive me of all self-control. A man was passing us, returning for the night to the hills, with a scythe over his shoulder and a can of some liquid in his hand. I forgot the destiny of our race. I forgot the road that lay before my eyes, and I sprang at him, wrenched the can out of his hand, and began to drink.

 It was nothing stronger than beer, but in my exhausted state it overcame me in a moment. As in a dream, I saw the old man shut the gate, and heard him say: “This is where your road ends, and through this gate humanity – all that is left of it – will come in to us.”

 Though my senses were sinking into oblivion, they seemed to expand ere they reached it. They perceived the magic song of nightingales, and the odor of invisible hay, and stars piercing the fading sky. The man whose beer I had stolen lowered me down gently to sleep off its effects, and, as he did so, I saw that he was my brother.

The boy who resided at Agathox Lodge, 28, Buckingham Park Road, Surbiton, had often been puzzled by the old signpost that stood almost opposite. He asked his mother about it, and she replied that it was a joke, and not a very nice one, which had been made many years back by some naughty young men, and that the police ought to remove it. For there were two strange things about this signpost: firstly, it pointed up a blank alley, and, secondly, it had painted on it, in faded characters, the words, “To Heaven.”

 “What kind of young men were they?” he asked.

“I think your father told me that one of them wrote verses, and was expelled from the University, and came to grief in other ways. Still, it was a long time ago. You must ask your father about it. He will say the same as I do, that it was put up as a joke.”

 “So it doesn’t mean anything at all?”

 She sent him upstairs to put on his best things, for the Bonses were coming to tea, and he was to hand the cake-stand.

 It struck him, as he wrenched on his tightening trousers, that he might do worse than ask Mr. Bons about the signpost. His father, though very kind, always laughed at him – shrieked with laughter whenever he or any other child asked a question or spoke. But Mr. Bons was serious as well as kind. He had a beautiful house and lent one books, he was a churchwarden, and a candidate for the County Council; he had donated to the Free Library enormously, he presided over the Literary Society, and had Members of Parliament to stop with him – in short, he was probably the wisest person alive.

 Yet even Mr. Bons could only say that the signpost was a joke – the joke of a person named Shelley.

 “Of course!” cried the mother: “I told you so, dear. That was the name.”

 “Had you never heard of Shelley?” asked Mr. Bons.

 “No,” said the boy, and hung his head,

 “But is there no Shelley in the house?”

 “Why, yes!” exclaimed the lady, in much agitation. “Dear Mr. Bons, we aren’t such Philistines as that. Two at the least. One a wedding present, and the other, smaller print, in one of the spare rooms.”

 “I believe we have seven Shelleys,” said Mr. Bons, with a slow smile. Then he brushed the cake crumbs off his stomach – and, together with his daughter, rose to go.

 The boy, obeying a wink from his mother, saw them all the way to the warden gate, and when they had gone he did not at once return to the house, but gazed for a little up and down Buckingham Park Road.

 His parents lived at the right end of it. After No. 39 the quality of the houses dropped very suddenly, and 64 had not even a separate servants’ entrance. But at the present moment the whole road looked rather pretty, for the sun had just set in splendor, and the inequalities of rent were drowned in a saffron afterglow. Small birds twittered, and the breadwinners’ train shrieked musically down through the cutting – that wonderful cutting which has drawn to itself the whole beauty out of Surbiton. and clad itself, like any Alpine valley, with the glory of the fir and the silver birch and the primrose. It was this cutting that had first stirred desires within the boy – desires for something just a little different, he knew not what, desires that would return whenever things were sunlit as they were this evening, running up and down inside him, up and down, up and down. till he would feel quite unusual all over, and as likely as not would want to cry. This evening he was even sillier, for he slipped across the road towards the signpost and began to run up the blank alley.

 The alley runs between high walls – the walls of the gardens of “Ivanhoe” and “Bella Vista” respectively. It smells a little all the way, and is scarcely twenty yards long. including the turn at the end. So not unnaturally the boy soon came to a standstill. “I’d like to kick that Shelley,” he exclaimed, and glanced idly at a piece of paper which was pasted on the wall. Rather an odd piece of paper, and he read it carefully before he turned back. This is what he read:

 

S. and C.R.C.C.

 

Alteration in Service

 

 Owing to lack of patronage the Company are regretfully compelled to suspend the hourly service, and to retain only the

 

Sunrise and Sunset Omnibuses,

 

which will run as usual. It is to be hoped that the public will patronize an arrangement which is intended for their convenience. As an extra inducement the Company will, for the first time, now issue

 

Return Tickets!

 

(available one day only), which may be obtained of the driver. Passengers are again reminded that no tickets are issued at the other end, and that no complaints in this connection will receive consideration from the Company. Nor will the Company be responsible for any negligence or stupidity on the part of Passengers, nor for Hailstorms, Lightning, Loss of Tickets, nor for any act of God.

 

For the Direction.

 

 Now he had never seen this notice before, nor could he imagine where the omnibus went to. S, of course was for Surbiton, and R.C.C. meant Road Car Company. But what was the meaning of the other C.? Coombe and Maiden, perhaps, or possibly “City.” Yet it could not hope to compete with the South-Western. The whole thing, the boy reflected, was run on hopelessly unbusiness-like lines. Why not tickets from the other end? And what an hour to start! Then he realized that unless the notice was a hoax. an omnibus must have been starting just as he was wishing the Bonses good-bye. He peered at the ground through the gathering dusk, and there he saw what might or might not be the marks of wheels. Yet nothing had come out of the alley. And he had never seen an omnibus at any time in the Buckingham Park Road. No, it must be a hoax, like the signposts – like the fairy tales, like the dreams upon which he would wake suddenly in the night. And with a sigh he stepped from the alley – right into the arms of his father.

 Oh, how his father laughed! “Poor, poor Popsey!” he cried. “Diddums! Diddums! Diddums think he’d walky-palky up to Ewink!” And his mother, also convulsed with laughter, appeared on the steps of Agathox Lodge. “Don’t, Bob!” she gasped. “Don’t be so naughty! Oh, you’ll kill me! Oh, leave the boy alone!”

 But all that evening the joke was kept up. The father implored to be taken too. Was it a very tiring walk? Need one wipe one’s shoes on the doormat? And the boy went to bed feeling faint and sore, and thankful for only one thing – that he had not said a word about the omnibus. It was a hoax, yet through his dreams it grew more and more real, and the streets of Surbiton, through which he saw it driving, seemed instead to become hoaxes and shadows. And very early in the morning he woke with a cry, for he had had a glimpse of its destination.

 He struck a match, and its light fell not only on his watch but also on his calendar, so that he knew it to be half an hour to sunrise. It was pitch dark, for the fog had come down from London in the night, and all Surbiton was wrapped in its embrace. Yet he sprang out and dressed himself, for he was determined to settle once for all which was real: the omnibus or the streets. “I shall be a fool one way or the other,” he thought. “Until I know.” Soon he was shivering in the road under the gas lamp that guarded the entrance to the alley.

 To enter the alley itself required some courage. Not only was it horribly dark, but he now realized that it was an impossible terminus for an omnibus. If it had not been for a policeman, whom he heard approaching through the fog, he would never have made the attempt. The next moment he had made the attempt and failed. Nothing. Nothing but a blank alley and a very silly boy gaping at its dirty floor. It was a hoax. “I’ll tell papa and mamma,” he decided. “I deserve it. I deserve that they should know. I am too silly to be alive.” And he went back to the gate of Agathox Lodge. There he remembered that his watch was fast. The sun was not risen: it would not rise for two minutes. “Give the bus every chance,” he thought cynically, and returned into the alley.

 But the omnibus was there.

 It had two horses, whose sides were still smoking from their journey, and its two great lamps shone through the fog against the alley’s walls, changing their cobwebs and moss into tissues of fairyland. The driver was huddled up in a cape. He faced the blank wall, and how he had managed to drive in so neatly and so silently was one of the many things that the boy never discovered. Nor could he imagine how ever he would drive out.

 “Please,” his voice quavered through the foul brown air. “Please, is that an omnibus?” “Omnibus est,” said the driver, without turning round. There was a moments silence. The policeman passed, coughing, by the entrance of the alley. The boy crouched in the shadow, for he did not want to be found out. He was pretty sure, too, that it was a Pirate; nothing else, he reasoned, would go from such odd places and at such odd hours.

 “About when do you start?” He tried to sound nonchalant.

 “At sunrise.”

 “How far do you go?”

 “The whole way.”

 “And can I have a return ticket which will bring me all the way back?”

 “You can.”

 “Do you know. I half think I’ll come.” The driver made no answer. The sun must have risen, for he unhitched the brake. And scarcely had the boy jumped in before the omnibus was off.

 How? Did it turn? There was no room. Did it go forward? There was a blank wall. Yet it was moving – moving at a stately pace through the fog, which had turned from brown to yellow. The thought of warm bed and warmer breakfast made the boy feel faint. He wished he had not come.

 His parents would not have approved. He would have gone back to them if the weather had not made it impossible, The solitude was terrible; he was the only passenger. And the omnibus, though well-built, was cold and somewhat musty. He drew his coat round him, and in so doing chanced to feel his pocket. It was empty. He had forgotten his purse.

 “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop!” And then, being of a polite disposition, he glanced up at the painted notice-board so that he might call the driver by name. “Mr. Browne! stop; oh, do please stop!”

 Mr. Browne did not stop, but he opened a little window and looked in at the boy. His face was a surprise – so kind it was and modest.

 “Mr. Browne – I’ve left my purse behind. I’ve not got a penny. I can’t pay for the ticket. Will you take my watch – please? I am in the most awful hole.”

 “Tickets on this line,” said the driver, “whether single or return, can be purchased by coinage from no terrene mint. And a chronometer, though it had solaced the vigils of Charlemagne, or measured the slumbers of Laura, can acquire by no mutation the double-cake that charms the fangless Cerberus of Heaven!” So saying, he handed in the necessary ticket, and, while the boy said “Thank you,” continued: “Titular pretensions. I know it well, are vanity. Yet they merit no censure when uttered on a laughing lip, and in an homonymous world are in some sort useful, since they do serve to distinguish one Jack from his fellow. Remember me. Therefore – as Sir Thomas Browne.”

 “Are you a Sir? Oh, sorry!” He had heard of these gentlemen drivers. “It is good of you about the ticket. But if you go on at this rate, however does your bus pay?”

 “It does not pay. It was not intended to pay. Many are the faults of my equipage; it is compounded too curiously of foreign woods; its cushions tickle erudition rather than promote repose; and my horses are nourished not on the evergreen pastures of the moment, but on the dried bents and clovers of Latinity. But that it pays! – that error at all events was never intended and never attained.”

 “Sorry again –” said the boy rather hopelessly. Sir Thomas looked sad, fearing that, even for a moment, he had been the cause of sadness. He invited the boy to come up and sit beside him on the box, and together they journeyed on through the fog, which was now changing from yellow to white. There were no houses by the road; so it must be either Putney Heath or Wimbledon Common.

 “Have you been a driver always?”

 “I was a physician once.”

 “But why did you stop? Weren’t you good?”

 “As a healer of bodies I had scant success, and several score of my patients preceded me. But as a healer of the spirit I have succeeded beyond my hopes and my deserts. For though my drafts were not better nor subtler than those of other men, yet, by reason of the cunning goblets wherein I offered them, the queasy soul was ofttimes tempted to sip and be refreshed.”

 “The queasy soul” he murmured; “if the sun sets with trees in front of it, and you suddenly come strange all over, is that a queasy soul?”

 “Have you felt that?”

 “Why yes.”

 After a pause he told the boy a little, a very little, about the journey’s end. But they did not chatter much, for the boy, when he liked a person, would as soon sit silent in his company as speak, and this, he discovered, was also the mind of Sir Thomas Browne and of many others with whom he was to be acquainted. He heard, however, about the young man Shelley, who was now quite a famous person, with a carriage of his own, and about some of the other drivers who are in the service of the Company. Meanwhile the light grew stronger, though the fog did not disperse. It was now more like mist than fog, and at times would travel quickly across them, as if it was part of a cloud. They had been ascending, too, in a most puzzling way; for over two hours the horses had been pulling against the collar, and even if it were Richmond Hill they ought to have been at the top long ago. Perhaps it was Epsom, or even the North Downs; yet the air seemed keener than that which blows on either. And as to the name of their destination. Sir Thomas Browne was silent.

 Crash!

 “Thunder, by Jove!” said the boy, “and not so far off either. Listen to the echoes! It’s more like mountains.”

 He thought, not very vividly, of his father and mother. He saw them sitting down to sausages and listening to the storm. He saw his own empty place. Then there would be questions, alarms, theories, jokes, consolations. They would expect him back at lunch. To lunch he would not come, nor to tea, but he would be in for dinner, and so his day’s truancy would be over. If he had had his purse he would have bought them presents – not that he should have known what to get them.

 Crash!

 The peal and the lightning came together. The cloud quivered as if it were alive; and torn streamers of mist rushed past. “Are you afraid?” asked Sir Thomas Browne.

 “What is there to be afraid of? Is it much farther?”

 The horses of the omnibus stopped just as a ball of fire burst up and exploded with a ringing noise that was deafening but clear, like the noise of a blacksmith’s forge. All the cloud was shattered.

 “Oh, listen, Sir Thomas Browne! No, I mean look; we shall get a view at last. No, I mean listen; that sounds like a rainbow!”

 The noise had died into the faintest murmur, beneath which another murmur grew, spreading stealthily, steadily – in a curve that widened but did not vary. And in widening curves a rainbow was spreading from the horses’ feet into the dissolving mists.

 “But how beautiful! What colors! Where will it stop? It is more like the rainbows you can tread on. More like dreams.”

 The color and the sound grew together. The rainbow spanned an enormous gulf. Clouds rushed under it and were pierced by it, and still it grew, reaching forward, conquering the darkness, until it touched something that seemed more solid than a cloud.

 The boy stood up. “What is that out there?” he called. “What does it rest on, out at that other end?”

 In the morning sunshine a precipice shone forth beyond the gulf. A precipice – or was it a castle? The horses moved. They set their feet upon the rainbow.

 “Oh, look!” the boy shouted. “Oh – listen! Those caves – or are they gateways? Oh, look between those cliffs at those ledges. I see people! I see trees!”

 “Look also below,” whispered Sir Thomas. “Neglect not the diviner Acheron.”

 The boy looked below, past the flames of the rainbow that licked against their wheels. The gulf also had cleared, and in its depths there flowed an everlasting river. One sunbeam entered and struck a green pool. and as they passed over he saw three maidens rise to the surface of the pool, singing, and playing with something that glistened like a ring.

 “You down in the water –” he called.

 They answered, “You up on the bridge –” There was a burst of music. “You up on the bridge, good luck to you. Truth in the depth – truth on the height.”

 “You down in the water, what are you doing?”

 Sir Thomas Browne replied: “They sport in the mancipiary possession of their gold”; and the omnibus arrived.

 The boy was in disgrace. He sat locked up in the nursery of Agathox Lodge, learning poetry for a punishment. His father had said, “My boy! I can pardon anything but untruthfulness,” and had caned him, saying at each stroke, “There is no onmibus, no driver, no bridge, no mountain; you are a truant, a guttersnipe, a liar.” His father could be very stern at times. His mother had begged him to say he was sorry. But he could not say that. It was the greatest day of his life, in spite of the caning and the poetry at the end or it.

 He had returned punctually at sunset – driven not by Sir Thomas Browne, but by a maiden lady who was full of quiet fun. They had talked of omnibuses and also of barouche landaus. How far away her gentle voice seemed now! Yet it was scarcely three hours since he had left her up the alley.

 His mother called through the door. “Dear, you are to come down and to bring your poetry with you.”

 He came down, and found that Mr. Bons was in the smoking-room with his father. It had been a dinner party.

 “Here is the great traveler!” said his father grimly. “Here is the young gentleman who drives in an onmibus over rainbows, while young ladies sing to him.” Pleased with his wit, he laughed.

 “After all –” said Mr. Bons, smiling, “there is something a little like it in Wagner. It is odd how, in quite illiterate minds, you will find glimmers of Artistic Truth. The case interests me. Let me plead for the culprit. We have all romanced in our time, haven’t we?”

 “Hear how kind Mr. Bons is,” said his mother, while his father said. “Very well. Let him say his poem – and that will do. He is going away to my sister on Tuesday, and she will cure him of this alley-slopering.” (Laughter.) “Say your poem.”

 The boy began. “Standing aloof in giant ignorance.”

 His father laughed again – roared. “One for you, my son! ‘Standing aloof in giant ignorance!’ I never knew these poets talked sense. Just describes you. Here, Bons, you go in for poetry. Put him through it, will you, while I fetch up the whisky?”

 “Yes, give me the Keats,” said Mr. Bons. “Let him say his Keats to me.”

 So for a few moments the wise man and the ignorant boy were left alone in the smoking-room.

 “‘Standing aloof in giant ignorance, of thee I dream and of the Cyclades, as one who sits ashore and longs perchance to visit –’”

 “Quite right. To visit what?”

 “‘To visit dolphin coral in deep seas,’” said the boy, and burst into tears.

 “Come, come! why do you cry?”

 “Because – because all these words that only rhymed before – now that I’ve come back they’re me.”

 Mr. Bons laid the Keats down. The case was more interesting than he had expected. “You!” he exclaimed. “This sonnet you?”

 “Yes – and look further on: ‘Aye, on the shores of darkness there is light, and precipices show untrodden green.’ It is so, sir. All these things are true.”

 “I never doubted it,” said Mr. Bons, with closed eyes.

 “You – then you believe me? You believe in the omnibus and the driver and the storm and that return ticket I got for nothing and –”

 “Tut, tut! No more of your yarns – my boy. I meant that I never doubted the essential truth of poetry. Some day, when you have read more, you will understand what I mean.”

 “But Mr. Bons, it is so. There is light upon the shores of darkness. I have seen it coming. Light and a wind.”

 “Nonsense –” said Mr. Bons.

 “If I had stopped! They tempted me. They told me to give up my ticket – for you cannot come back if you lose your ticket. They called from the river for it, and indeed I was tempted, for I have never been so happy as among those precipices. But I thought of my mother and father, and that I must fetch them. Yet they will not come, though the road starts opposite our house. It has all happened as the people up there warned me, and Mr. Bons has disbelieved me like every one else. I have been caned. I shall never see that mountain again.”

 “What’s that about me?” said Mr. Bons – sitting up in his chair very suddenly.

 “I told them about you, and how clever you were, and how many books you had – and they said, “Mr. Bons will certainly disbelieve you.”

 “Stuff and nonsense, my young friend. You grow impertinent. I – well – I will settle the matter. Not a word to your father. I will cure you. Tomorrow evening I will myself call here to take you for a walk, and at sunset we will go up this alley opposite and hunt for your onmibus, you silly little boy.”

 His face grew serious, for the boy was not disconcerted, but leapt about the room singing, “Joy! joy! I told them you would believe me. We will drive together over the rainbow. I told them that you would come.” After all – could there be anything in the story? Wagner? Keats? Shelley? Sir Thomas Browne? Certainly the case was interesting.

 And on the morrow evening, though it was pouring with rain, Mr. Bons did not omit to call at Agathox Lodge.

 The boy was ready, bubbling with excitement, and skipping about in a way that rather vexed the President of the Literary Society. They took a turn down Buckingham Park Road, and then – having seen that no one was watching them – slipped up the alley. Naturally enough (for the sun was setting) they ran straight against the omnibus.

 “Good heavens!” exclaimed Mr. Bons. “Good gracious heavens!”

 It was not the omnibus in which the boy had driven first, nor yet that in which he had returned.

 There were three horses – black- gray, and white, the gray being the finest. The driver, who turned round at the mention of goodness and of heaven, was a sallow man with terrifying jaws and sunken eyes. Mr. Bons, on seeing him, gave a cry as if of recognition, and began to tremble violently.

 The boy jumped in.

 “Is it possible?” cried Mr. Bons. “Is the impossible possible?”

 “Sir; come in, sir. It is such a fine omnibus. Oh, here is his name – Dan someone.

 Mr. Bons sprang in too. A blast of wind immediately slammed the omnibus door, and the shock jerked down all the omnibus blinds, which were very weak on their springs.

 “Dan … Show me. Good gracious heavens! we’re moving.”

 “Hooray!” said the boy.

 Mr. Bons became flustered. He had not intended to be kidnapped. He could not find the door handle, nor push up the blinds. The omnibus was quite dark, and by the time he had struck a match, night had come on outside also. They were moving rapidly.

 “A strange, a memorable adventure,” he said, surveying the interior of the omnibus, which was large, roomy, and constructed with extreme regularity, every part exactly answering to every other part. Over the door (the handle of which was outside) was written. Lasciate ogni baldanza voi che entrate – at least, that was what was written, but Mr. Bons said that it was Lashy arty something – and that baldanza was a mistake for speranza. His voice sounded as if he was in church. Meanwhile, the boy called to the cadaverous driver for two return tickets. They were handed in without a word. Mr. Bons covered his face with his hand and again trembled. “Do you know who that is!” he whispered, when the little window had shut upon them. “It is the impossible.”

 “Well, I don’t like him as much as Sir Thomas Browne, though I shouldn’t be surprised if he had even more in him.”

 “More in him?” He stamped irritably. “By accident you have made the greatest discovery of the century, and all you can say is that there is more in this man. Do you remember those vellum books in my library – stamped with red lilies? This – sit still. I bring you stupendous news! – this is the man who wrote them.”

 The boy sat quite still. “I wonder if we shall see Mrs. Gamp?” he asked – after a civil pause.

 “Mrs. –?”

 “Mrs. Gamp and Mrs. Harris. I like Mrs. Harris. I came upon them quite suddenly. Mrs. Gamp’s bandboxes have moved over the rainbow so badly. All the bottoms have fallen out, and two of the pippins off her bedstead tumbled into the stream.”

 “Out there sits the man who wrote my vellum books,” thundered Mr. Bons – “and you talk to me of Dickens and of Mrs. Gamp?”

 “I know Mrs. Gamp so well,” he apologized. “I could not help being glad to see her. I recognized her voice. She was telling Mrs. Harris about Mrs. Prig.”

 “Did you spend the whole day in her elevating company?”

 “Oh – no. I raced. I met a man who took me out beyond to a racecourse. You run, and there are dolphins out at sea.”

 “Indeed. Do you remember the man’s name?”

 “Achilles. No; he was later. Tom Jones.”

 Mr. Bons sighed heavily. “Well, my lad, you have made a miserable mess of it. Think of a cultured person with your opportunities! A cultured person would have known all these characters and known what to have said to each. He would not have wasted his time with a Mrs. Gamp or a Tom Jones. The creations of Homer, of Shakespeare, and of Him who drives us now, would alone have contented him. He would not have raced. He would have asked intelligent questions.”

 “But, Mr. Bons.” said the boy humbly, “you will be a cultured person. I told them so.”

 “True, true, and I beg you not to disgrace me when we arrive. No gossiping. No running. Keep close to my side, and never speak to these Immortals unless they speak to you. Yes, and give me the return tickets. You will be losing them.”

 The boy surrendered the tickets, but felt a little sore. After all, he had found the way to this place. It was hard first to be disbelieved and then to be lectured. Meanwhile, the rain had stopped, and moonlight crept into the onmibus through the cracks in the blinds.

 “But how is there to be a rainbow?” cried the boy.

 “You distract me,” snapped Mr. Bons. “I wish to meditate on beauty. I wish to goodness I was with a reverent and sympathetic person.

 The lad bit his lip. He made a hundred good resolutions. He would imitate Mr. Bons all the visit. He would not laugh, or run, or sing, or do any of the vulgar things that must have disgusted his new friends last time. He would be very careful to pronounce their names properly, and to remember who knew whom. Achilles did not know Tom Jones – at least, so Mr. Bons said. The Duchess of Malfi was older than Mrs. Gamp – at least, so Mr. Bons said. He would be self-conscious, reticent, and prim. He would never say he liked anyone. Yet, when the blind flew up at a chance touch of his head, all these good resolutions went to the winds, for the omnibus had reached the summit of a moonlit hill, and there was the chasm, and there, across it – stood the old precipices, dreaming, with their feet in the everlasting river. He exclaimed. “The mountains! Listen to the new time in the water! Look at the camp fires in the ravines,” and Mr. Bons after a hasty glance retorted. “Water? Camp fires? Ridiculous rubbish. Hold your tongue. There is nothing at all.”

 Yet, under his eyes, a rainbow formed, compounded not of sunlight and storm, but of moonlight and the spray of the river. The three horses put their feet upon it. He thought it the finest rainbow he had seen, but did not dare to say so, since Mr. Bons said that nothing was there. He leant out – the window had opened – and sang the tune that rose from the sleeping waters.

 “The prelude to Rhinegold,” said Mr. Bons suddenly. “Who taught you these leit motifs.” He, too, looked out of the window. Then he behaved very oddly. He gave a choking cry, and fell back on to the onmibus floor. He writhed and kicked. His face was green.

 “Does the bridge make you dizzy?” the boy asked.

 “Dizzy,” gasped Mr. Bons. “I want to go back. Tell the driver.”

 But the driver shook his head.

 “We are nearly there,” said the boy. “They are asleep. Shall I call? They will be so pleased to see you, for I have prepared them.”

 Mr. Bons moaned. They moved over the lunar rainbows which ever and ever broke away behind their wheels. How still the night was! Who would be sentry at the Gate?

 “I am coming,” he shouted, again forgetting the hundred resolutions. “I am returning – I, the boy.”

 “The boy is returning.” cried a voice to other voices – who repeated, “The boy is returning.”

 “I am bringing Mr. Bons with me.”

 Silence.

 “I should have said Mr. Bons is bringing me with him.”

 Profound silence.

 “Who stands sentry?”

 “Achilles.”

 And on the rocky causeway – close to the springing of the rainbow bridge, he saw a young man who carried a wonderful shield.

 “Mr. Bons, it is Achilles, armed.”

 “I want to go back,” said Mr. Bons.

 The last fragment of the rainbow melted, the wheels sang upon the living rock, the door of the omnibus burst open. Out leapt the boy – he could not resist – and sprang to meet the warrior, who, stooping suddenly – caught him on his shield.

 “Achilles!” he cried – “let me get down. for I am ignorant and vulgar – and I must wait for that Mr. Bons of whom I told you yesterday.”

 But Achilles raised him aloft. He crouched on the wonderful shield, on heroes and burning cities, on vineyards graven in gold, on every dear passion, every joy, on the entire image of the Mountain that he had discovered, encircled, like it, with an everlasting stream. “No, no” he protested. “I am not worthy. It is Mr. Bons who must be up here.”

 But Mr. Bons was whimpering, and Achilles trumpeted and cried, “Stand upright upon my shield!”

 “Sir, I did not mean to stand! something made me stand. Sir, why do you delay? Here is only the great Achilles, whom you knew.”

 Mr. Bons screamed, “I see no one. I see nothing. I want to go back.” Then he cried to the driver. “Save me! Let me stop in your chariot. I have honored you. I have quoted you. I have bound you in vellum. Take me back to my world.”

 The driver replied. “I am the means and not the end. I am the food and not the life. Stand by yourself, as that boy has stood. I cannot save you. For poetry is a spirit; and they that would worship it must worship in spirit and in truth.”

 Mr. Bons – he could not resist – crawled out of the beautiful omnibus. His face appeared, gaping horribly. His hands followed, one gripping the step. the other beating the air. Now his shoulders emerged, his chest, his stomach. With a shriek of “I see London.” he fell – fell against the hard, moonlit rock, fell into it as if it were water, fell through it, vanished, and was seen by the boy no more.

 “Where have you fallen to, Mr. Bons? Here is a procession arriving to honor you with music and torches. Here come the men and women whose names you know.” The mountain is awake, the river is awake, over the race course the sea is awaking those dolphins, and it is all for you. They want you –”

 There was the touch of fresh leaves on his forehead. Someone had crowned him.

 

Τ Ε Λ Ο Σ

 

From the Kingston Gazette, Surbiton Times, and Raynes Park Observer

 

The body of Mr. Septimus Bons has been found in a shockingly mutilated condition in the vicinity of the Bermondsey gas works. The deceased’s pockets contained a sovereign-purse, a silver cigar-case, a bijou pronouncing dictionary, and a couple of omnibus tickets. The unfortunate gentleman had apparently been hurled from a considerable height. Foul play is suspected, and a thorough investigation is pending by the authorities.