oubt whether they will shut
... and the fog rolled over the sill in banks and round the open glass
doors, till even the white cap of a Sister could hardly be seen as she
passed.

I am pleased with any atmospheric exaggeration; the adventure of going
home was before me....

At eight I felt my way down over the steps into the alley; the torch,
held low on the ground, lighted but a small, pale circle round my shoes.
Outside it was black and solid and strangely quiet.

In the yard a man here and there raised his voice in a shout; feet
strayed near mine and edged away.

At the cross-roads I came on a lantern standing upon the ground, and by
it drooped the nose of a benighted horse; the spurt of a match lit the
face of its owner.

Up the hill, the torch held low against the kerbstone, the sudden
looming of a black giant made me start back as I nearly ran my head into
a telegraph-post....

I was at the bottom of the sea; fathoms and fathoms of fog must stand
above my head.

Suddenly a dozen lights showed about me, then the whole sky alight with
stars, and naked trees with the rime on them, bristling; the long road
ran up the hill its accustomed steel colour, the post office was there
with its red window, the lean old lamp-post with its broken arm....

I had walked out of the fog as one walks out of the sea on to a beach!

Looking back, I could see the pit behind me; the fog standing on the
road like a solid wall, straight up and down. Again I felt a pride in
the hill. "Down there," I thought, "those groping feet and shouting
voices; that man and that horse ... they don't guess!"

I walked briskly up the hill, and presently stepped on to the pavement;
but at the edge of the asphalt, where tufted grass should grow,
something crackled and hissed under my feet. Under the torchlight the
unnatural grass was white and brittle with rime, fanciful as a stage
fairy scene, and the railings beyond it glittered too.

I slid in the road as I turned down the drive; a sheet of ice was spread
where the leaky pipe is, and the steps up to the house door were
slippery.

But oh, the honeysuckle and the rose-trees...! Bush, plant, leaf, stem,
rimed from end to end. The garden was a Bond Street jeweller's!

Perhaps the final chapter on Mr. Pettitt....

In the excitement of the ward I had almost forgotten him; he is buried
in the Mess, in the days when I lived on the floor below.

To-night, as I was waiting by the open hatch of t