were few other interruptions to the silence of that chapel-like
library. Half a dozen times in the first few months a fair-haired,
rather supercilious young man came and fetched away a few volumes; but
even he evidenced an inclination to walk on tiptoe, a tendency that
mastered him whenever he forgot for a moment his self-imposed role of
scorn....

Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back
with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with
buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and
they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the woodside by a
sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is
black with February rain. And, again, the unfolding of the year is about
us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the
blackthorn....

Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then
the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis
Court.

PART THREE

MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

PART THREE

MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER

CHAPTER XIV

HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK

I

The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with
an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two
deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the
second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life
I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the
past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of
mine still waiting to be written.

It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of
it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed
with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations.
There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to
Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see
Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the
book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at
last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from
America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the
child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process,
I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live,
temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I