part of which was overgrown with stunted
oak copses, or divided into large sloping fields. At the end, the
water of a tidal creek--Tressillian water--caught the eye. The only
sounds that ever penetrated to the car were the cries of birds, or
the sound of sheep-bells, or the lowing of cows, with an occasional
halloo from the farm, children calling among the copses, or the
shrill whistle from over the hills, telling of the train, that,
burrowing among the downs, tied one to the noisier world.

Truro has been much opened up since then. It has a bishop, and the
rudiments of a cathedral. It has burst into a local and spasmodic
life. But when I knew it through Arthur, it was the sleepiest and
laziest town alive, with the water rippling through the streets.
Old-world farmers, with their strange nasal dialect, used to haunt
the streets on market day, like the day on which we first drove
through it on our way to Tredennis. Arthur was well and serene. He
took the keenest delight in the fragrance of retirement that hung
about the place: people to whose minds and ears modern ideas, modern
weariness, had never penetrated; who lived a serious indolent life,
their one diversion the sermon and the prayer-meeting, their one
dislike "London ways."

We reached the house in the evening, losing our way more than once in
our endeavour to discover it. Two sitting-rooms were furnished,
both large airy rooms looking upon the garden, and a bedroom and
dressing-room up-stairs, which Arthur and his charge were to occupy.
The housekeeper and her handmaiden, who were to be his servants, were
already installed, and had arranged in a certain fashion the new
furniture that Arthur had sent down, jostling with the old, and his
books. As we sat, the first evening, with our cigarettes, in the
dusk, watching the green sky over the quiet hills, a wonderful
sensation of repose seemed to pass into one from the place. "I feel
as if I might be very happy here," said Arthur, "if I were allowed;
and perhaps work out my old idea a little more about the meaning of
external things."

I was to return to London in a day or two, to see about any
commission that might have been neglected, and to bring down the
boy, who was now daily expected.

In my absence I received the following letter from Arthur. The serene
mood had had its reaction.

"I have told you, I think, of the depressing effect that a new place
has on me till I get habituated to it. There is a consta