another, against the paling and the wall. There the wind swayed the
great elms scattered on the sidewalk, the remnants of the old stately
fields, and beneath each tree was a pool of wet, and a torment of
raindrops fell with every gust. And one passed through the red avenues,
perhaps by a little settlement of flickering shops, and passed the last
sentinel wavering lamp, and the road became a ragged lane, and the storm
screamed from hedge to hedge across the open fields. And then, beyond,
one touched again upon a still remoter avant-garde of London, an island
amidst the darkness, surrounded by its pale of twinkling, starry lights.

He remembered his wanderings amongst these outposts of the town, and
thought how desolate all their ways must be tonight. They were solitary
in wet and wind, and only at long intervals some one pattered and hurried
along them, bending his eyes down to escape the drift of rain. Within the
villas, behind the close-drawn curtains, they drew about the fire, and
wondered at the violence of the storm, listening for each great gust as
it gathered far away, and rocked the trees, and at last rushed with a
huge shock against their walls as if it were the coming of the sea. He
thought of himself walking, as he had often walked, from lamp to lamp
on such a night, treasuring his lonely thoughts, and weighing the hard
task awaiting him in his room. Often in the evening, after a long day's
labor, he had thrown down his pen in utter listlessness, feeling that he
could struggle no more with ideas and words, and he had gone out into
driving rain and darkness, seeking the word of the enigma as he tramped
on and on beneath these outer battlements of London.

Or on some grey afternoon in March or November he had sickened of the
dull monotony and the stagnant life that he saw from his window, and had
taken his design with him to the lonely places, halting now and again by
a gate, and pausing in the shelter of a hedge through which the austere
wind shivered, while, perhaps, he dreamed of Sicily, or of sunlight on
the Provencal olives. Often as he strayed solitary from street to field,
and passed the Syrian fig tree imprisoned in Britain, nailed to an
ungenial wall, the solution of the puzzle became evident, and he laughed
and hurried home eager to make the page speak, to note the song he had
heard on his way.

Sometimes he had spent many hours treading this edge and brim of
London, now lost amidst the dun fields, wa