on the road. And involuntarily there came from me a sound, not
quite a shout, not quite an oath. I saw the mare's eye turn back,
faintly derisive, as who should say: Alone I did it! Then slowly,
comfortably, a little ashamed, we jogged on, in the mood of men and
horses when danger is over. So pleasant it seemed now, in one short
half-hour, to have passed through the circle-swing of the emotions, from
the ecstasy of hot recklessness to the clutching of chill fear. But the
meeting-point of those two sensations we had left out there on the
mysterious moor! Why, at one moment, had we thought it finer than
anything on earth to risk the breaking of our necks; and the next,
shuddered at being lost in the darkening mist with winter night fast
coming on?

And very luxuriously we turned once more into the lanes, enjoying the
past, scenting the future. Close to home, the first little eddy of wind
stirred, and the song of dripping twigs began; an owl hooted, honey-soft,
in the fog. We came on two farm hands mending the lane at the turn of
the avenue, and, curled on the top of the bank, their cosy red collie
pup, waiting for them to finish work for the day. He raised his sharp
nose and looked at us dewily. We turned down, padding softly in the wet
fox-red drifts under the beechtrees, whereon the last leaves still
flickered out in the darkening whiteness, that now seemed so little
eerie. We passed the grey-green skeleton of the farm-yard gate. A hen
ran across us, clucking, into the dusk. The maze drew her long,
home-coming snuffle, and stood still.
1910.

THE PROCESSION

In one of those corners of our land canopied by the fumes of blind
industry, there was, on that day, a lull in darkness. A fresh wind had
split the customary heaven, or roof of hell; was sweeping long drifts of
creamy clouds across a blue still pallid with reek. The sun even
shone--a sun whose face seemed white and wondering. And under that rare
sun all the little town, among its slag heaps and few tall chimneys, had
an air of living faster. In those continuous courts and alleys, where
the women worked, smoke from each little forge rose and dispersed into
the wind with strange alacrity; amongst the women, too, there was that
same eagerness, for the sunshine had crept in and was making pale all
those dark-raftered, sooted ceilings which covered them in, together with
their immortal comrades, the small open furnaces. About their work they
ha