ith a noise like
a scream, and a great oak by the roadside ground its boughs together with
a dismal grating jar. As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all
upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides
crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of molten brass, and the very
road glittered. He was wonder-struck, almost aghast, before the scarlet
magic of the afterglow. The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames
from heaven were smitten about its walls, and above there was a dark
floating cloud, like fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree
showed as black as midnight against the black of the furnace.

When he got home he heard his mother's voice calling: "Here's Lucian at
last. Mary, Master Lucian has come, you can get the tea ready." He told a
long tale of his adventures, and felt somewhat mortified when his father
seemed perfectly acquainted with the whole course of the lane, and knew
the names of the wild woods through which he had passed in awe.

"You must have gone by the Darren, I suppose"--that was all he said.
"Yes, I noticed the sunset; we shall have some stormy weather. I don't
expect to see many in church tomorrow."

There was buttered toast for tea "because it was holidays." The red
curtains were drawn, and a bright fire was burning, and there was the old
familiar furniture, a little shabby, but charming from association. It
was much pleasanter than the cold and squalid schoolroom; and much better
to be reading _Chambers's Journal_ than learning Euclid; and better to
talk to his father and mother than to be answering such remarks as: "I
say, Taylor, I've torn my trousers; how much to do you charge for
mending?" "Lucy, dear, come quick and sew this button on my shirt."

That night the storm woke him, and he groped with his hands amongst the
bedclothes, and sat up, shuddering, not knowing where he was. He had seen
himself, in a dream, within the Roman fort, working some dark horror, and
the furnace doors were opened and a blast of flame from heaven was
smitten upon him.

Lucian went slowly, but not discreditably, up the school, gaining prizes
now and again, and falling in love more and more with useless reading and
unlikely knowledge. He did his elegiacs and iambics well enough, but he
preferred exercising himself in the rhymed Latin of the middle ages. He
like history, but he loved to meditate on a land laid waste, Britain
deserted by the legions, the rare pavements rive