ns, or vice-versa if the goblins bring him more--his
favourite story, when bodily soothed by the drug and mentally fiercely
excited, tells of a quest undertaken ever so long ago for nothing more
marketable than an old woman's song.

Picture him telling it. An old man, lean and bearded, and almost
monstrously long, that lolled in a city's gateway on a crag perhaps
ten miles high; the houses for the most part facing eastward, lit by
the sun and moon and the constellations we know, but one house on the
pinnacle looking over the edge of the world and lit by the glimmer of
those unearthly spaces where one long evening wears away the stars: my
little offering of bash; a long forefinger that nipped it at once on a
stained and greedy thumb--all these are in the foreground of the
picture. In the background, the mystery of those silent houses and of
not knowing who their denizens were, or what service they had at the
hands of the long porter and what payment he had in return, and
whether he was mortal.

Picture him in the gateway of this incredible town, having swallowed
my bash in silence, stretch his great length, lean back, and begin to
speak.

It seems that one clear morning a hundred years ago, a visitor to Tong
Tong Tarrup was climbing up from the world. He had already passed
above the snow and had set his foot on a step of the earthward
stairway that goes down from Tong Tong Tarrup on to the rocks, when
the long porter saw him. And so painfully did he climb those easy
steps that the grizzled man on watch had long to wonder whether or not
the stranger brought him bash, the drug that gives a meaning to the
stars and seems to explain the twilight. And in the end there was not
a scrap of bash, and the stranger had nothing better to offer that
grizzled man than his mere story only.

It seems that the stranger's name was Gerald Jones, and he always
lived in London; but once as a child he had been on a Northern moor.
It was so long ago that he did not remember how, only somehow or other
he walked alone on the moor, and all the ling was in flower. There was
nothing in sight but ling and heather and bracken, except, far off
near the sunset, on indistinct hills, there were little vague patches
that looked like the fields of men. With evening a mist crept up and
hid the hills, and still he went walking on over the moor. And then he
came to the valley, a tiny valley in the midst of the moor, whose
sides were incredibly steep. He