ing a road on the foot-hills of the mountain.
However, I plodded on, drawing some small comfort from the fact that as
darkness came the mist rose from the ground and appeared to condense in
a ghostly curtain twenty feet overhead, where it hung between me and a
clear night sky, presently illumined by starlight with the strangest
effect.

Tired, footsore, and dejected, I struggled on a little further. Oh for
a cab, I laughed bitterly to myself. Oh for even the humble necessary
omnibus of civilisation. Oh for the humblest tuck-shop where a mug of
hot coffee and a snack could be had by a homeless wanderer; and as I
thought and plodded savagely on, collar up, hands in pockets, through
the black tangles of that endless wood, suddenly the sound of wailing
children caught my ear!

It was the softest, saddest music ever mortal listened to. It was as
though scores of babes in pain were dropping to sleep on their mothers'
breasts, and all hushing their sorrows with one accord in a common
melancholy chorus. I stood spell-bound at that elfin wailing, the
first sound to break the deathly stillness of the road for an hour or
more, and my blood tingled as I listened to it. Nevertheless, here was
what I was looking for; where there were weeping children there must be
habitations, and shelter, and--splendid thought!--supper. Poor little
babes! their crying was the deadliest, sweetest thing in sorrows I ever
listened to. If it was cholic--why, I knew a little of medicine, and in
gratitude for that prospective supper, I had a soul big enough to cure
a thousand; and if they were in disgrace, and by some quaint Martian
fashion had suffered simultaneous punishment for baby offences, I would
plead for them.

In fact, I fairly set off at the run towards the sobbing, in the black,
wet, night air ahead, and, tripping as I ran, looked down and saw in
the filtering starlight that the forest grass had given place to an
ancient roadway, paved with moss-grown flag-stones, such as they still
used in Seth.

Without stopping to think what that might mean I hurried on, the
wailing now right ahead, a tremulous tumult of gentle grief rising and
falling on the night air like the sound of a sea after a storm; and so,
presently, in a minute or two, came upon a ruined archway spanning the
lonely road, held together by great masses of black-fingered creepers,
gaunt and ghostly in the shadows, an extraordinary and unexpected
vision; and as I stopped w