then, laying it down,
went to the window. His rooms were in the highest flat of a lofty
building, and his glance could travel afar beyond the clear panes of
glass, as though he were looking out of the lantern of a lighthouse.
The slopes of the roofs glistened, the dark broken ridges succeeded each
other without end like sombre, uncrested waves, and from the depths of
the town under his feet ascended a confused and unceasing mutter. The
spires of churches, numerous, scattered haphazard, uprose like beacons
on a maze of shoals without a channel; the driving rain mingled with the
falling dusk of a winter's evening; and the booming of a big clock on a
tower, striking the hour, rolled past in voluminous, austere bursts
of sound, with a shrill vibrating cry at the core. He drew the heavy
curtains.

The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his
footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No
more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests
as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered
Country over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour
was striking! No more! No more!--but the opened packet under the lamp
brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savour of the past--a
multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the
shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He
sighed and sat down to read.

At first he saw three distinct enclosures. A good many pages closely
blackened and pinned together; a loose square sheet of greyish paper
with a few words traced in a handwriting he had never seen before, and
an explanatory letter from Marlow. From this last fell another letter,
yellowed by time and frayed on the folds. He picked it up and, laying it
aside, turned to Marlow's message, ran swiftly over the opening lines,
and, checking himself, thereafter read on deliberately, like one
approaching with slow feet and alert eyes the glimpse of an undiscovered
country.

'. . . I don't suppose you've forgotten,' went on the letter. 'You alone
have showed an interest in him that survived the telling of his story,
though I remember well you would not admit he had mastered his fate.
You prophesied for him the disaster of weariness and of disgust with
acquired honour, with the self-appointed task, with the love sprung from
pity and youth. You had said you knew so well "that kind of thing," it