ly, she did not move, but sung on and on, I never heard a song
that was so soothing. I lay down on one of the mattresses by the wall,
which was all inlaid with mosaics, and pulled over me some of the
cloths with their beautiful alien work, and almost immediately my
thoughts seemed part of the song that the woman was singing in the
midst of the court under the golden braziers that hung from the high
roof, and the song turned them to dreams, and so I fell asleep.

A small wind having arisen, I was awakened by a sprig of heather that
beat continually against my face. It was morning on Mallington Moor,
and the city was quite gone.

Why the Milkman Shudders When He Perceives the Dawn

In the Hall of the Ancient Company of Milkmen round the great
fireplace at the end, when the winter logs are burning and all the
craft are assembled they tell to-day, as their grandfathers told
before them, why the milkman shudders when he perceives the dawn.

When dawn comes creeping over the edges of hills, peers through the
tree-trunks making wonderful shadows, touches the tops of tall columns
of smoke going up from awakening cottages in the valleys, and breaks
all golden over Kentish fields, when going on tip-toe thence it comes
to the walls of London and slips all shyly up those gloomy streets the
milkman perceives it and shudders.

A man may be a Milkman's Working Apprentice, may know what borax is
and how to mix it, yet not for that is the story told to him. There
are five men alone that tell that story, five men appointed by the
Master of the Company, by whom each place is filled as it falls
vacant, and if you do not hear it from one of them you hear the story
from no one and so can never know why the milkman shudders when he
perceives the dawn.

It is the way of one of these five men, greybeards all and milkmen
from infancy, to rub his hands by the fire when the great logs burn,
and to settle himself more easily in his chair, perhaps to sip some
drink far other than milk, then to look round to see that none are
there to whom it would not be fitting the tale should be told and,
looking from face to face and seeing none but the men of the Ancient
Company, and questioning mutely the rest of the five with his eyes, if
some of the five be there, and receiving their permission, to cough
and to tell the tale. And a great hush falls in the Hall of the
Ancient Company, and something about the shape of the roof and the
rafters mak