ouses that make up the
present village big birch besoms are stuck, to wipe off the worst of the
clay, which will give some idea of the texture of the district. I doubt if
the place would be there at all, if it were not a fading memory of things
gone for ever. It was the big port of England in Roman times, Portus
Lemanis, and now the sea is four miles away. All down the steep hill are
boulders and masses of Roman brickwork, and from it old Watling Street,
still paved in places, starts like an arrow to the north. I used to stand
on the hill and think of it all, the galleys and legions, the captives and
officials, the women and traders, the speculators like myself, all the
swarm and tumult that came clanking in and out of the harbour. And now
just a few lumps of rubble on a grassy slope, and a sheep or two--and I.
And where the port had been were the levels of the marsh, sweeping round
in a broad curve to distant Dungeness, and dotted here and there with tree
clumps and the church towers of old medical towns that are following
Lemanis now towards extinction.

That outlook on the marsh was, indeed, one of the finest views I have ever
seen. I suppose Dungeness was fifteen miles away; it lay like a raft on
the sea, and farther westward were the hills by Hastings under the setting
sun. Sometimes they hung close and clear, sometimes they were faded and
low, and often the drift of the weather took them clean out of sight. And
all the nearer parts of the marsh were laced and lit by ditches and
canals.

The window at which I worked looked over the skyline of this crest, and it
was from this window that I first set eyes on Cavor. It was just as I was
struggling with my scenario, holding down my mind to the sheer hard work
of it, and naturally enough he arrested my attention.

The sun had set, the sky was a vivid tranquillity of green and yellow, and
against that he came out black--the oddest little figure.

He was a short, round-bodied, thin-legged little man, with a jerky quality
in his motions; he had seen fit to clothe his extraordinary mind in a
cricket cap, an overcoat, and cycling knickerbockers and stockings. Why he
did so I do not know, for he never cycled and he never played cricket. It
was a fortuitous concurrence of garments, arising I know not how. He
gesticulated with his hands and arms, and jerked his head about and
buzzed. He buzzed like something electric. You never heard such buzzing.
And ever and again he clear