ed at his open window, even in winter time, doing nothing, not even
dreaming, simply waiting for the day to break. It seemed to him soft and
wrong that a man should take his clothes off and lie comfortably between
sheets. And then came another twist. When all the house was quiet, he
would slip out of a ground-floor window and roam for hours about the
lonely roads, a solitary boy revelling even then in the extraordinary
conduct of his life. There was in the neighbourhood a footpath through a
thick grove of trees which ran up a long, high hill, and, midway in the
ascent, crossed a railway cutting by a rustic bridge.

"That was my favourite walk, though I always entered by the swing-gate
in fear, and trembled at every movement of the branches, and continually
expected an attack. I would hang over that railway bridge, especially on
moonlit nights, and compose poems and thoughts--you know--great, short
thoughts." Hillyard laughed. "I was going to be a poet, you
understand--a clear, full voice such as had seldom been heard; my poems
were all about the moon sailing in the Empyrean and Death. Death was my
strong suit. I sent some of my poems to the local Press, signed 'Lethe,'
but I could never hear that they were published."

Stella Croyle laughed, and Hillyard went on. "From the top of the hill I
would strike off to the west, and see the morning break over London. In
summer that was wonderful! The Houses of Parliament. St Paul's like a
silver bubble rising out of the mist, then, as the mist cleared over the
river, a London clean and all silver in the morning light! I was going
to conquer all that, you know--I--

"'Silent upon a peak of Peckham Rye.'"

"I wonder you didn't kill yourself," cried Stella.

"I very nearly did," answered Hillyard.

"Didn't your parents interfere?"

"No. They never knew of my wanderings. They did know, of course, that I
used not to go to bed. But they left me alone. I was a bitter
disappointment in every way. They wanted a reasonable son, who would go
into the agency business, and they had instead--me. I should think that
I was pretty odious, too, and we were all of passionate tempers.
Besides, with all this reading, I didn't do particularly well at school.
How could I when day after day I would march off from the house, leaving
a smooth bed behind me in my room? We were thorny people. Quarrels were
frequent. My mother had a phrase which set my teeth on edge--'Don't you
talk, Martin, unt