lay down and looked at it through the
roots of the ling. And a long, long way below him, in a garden by a
cottage, with hollyhocks all round her that were taller than herself,
there sat an old woman on a wooden chair, singing in the evening. And
the man had taken a fancy to the song and remembered it after in
London, and whenever it came to his mind it made him think of
evenings--the kind you don't get in London--and he heard a soft wind
going idly over the moor and the bumble-bees in a hurry, and forgot
the noise of the traffic. And always, whenever he heard men speak of
Time, he grudged to Time most this song. Once afterwards he went to
that Northern moor again and found the tiny valley, but there was no
old woman in the garden, and no one was singing a song. And either
regret for the song that the old woman had sung, on a summer evening
twenty years away and daily receding, troubled his mind, or else the
wearisome work that he did in London, for he worked for a great firm
that was perfectly useless; and he grew old early, as men do in
cities. And at last, when melancholy brought only regret and the
uselessness of his work gained round him with age, he decided to
consult a magician. So to a magician he went and told him his
troubles, and particularly he told him how he had heard the song. "And
now," he said, "it is nowhere in the world."

"Of course it is not in the world," the magician said, "but over the
Edge of the World you may easily find it." And he told the man that he
was suffering from flux of time and recommended a day at the Edge of
the World. Jones asked what part of the Edge of the World he should go
to, and the magician had heard Tong Tong Tarrup well spoken of; so he
paid him, as is usual, in opals, and started at once on the journey.
The ways to that town are winding; he took the ticket at Victoria
Station that they only give if they know you: he went past Bleth: he
went along the Hills of Neol-Hungar and came to the Gap of Poy. All
these are in that part of the world that pertains to the fields we
know; but beyond the Gap of Poy on those ordinary plains, that so
closely resemble Sussex, one first meets the unlikely. A line of
common grey hills, the Hills of Sneg, may be seen at the edge of the
plain from the Gap of Poy; it is there that the incredible begins,
infrequently at first, but happening more and more as you go up the
hills. For instance, descending once into Poy Plains, the first thing
that