th his halberd.

It was about sunset, and the lamps were being lit. Auberon paused to
look at them, for they were Chiffy's finest work, and his artistic eye
never failed to feast on them. In memory of the Great Battle of the
Lamps, each great iron lamp was surmounted by a veiled figure, sword
in hand, holding over the flame an iron hood or extinguisher, as if
ready to let it fall if the armies of the South and West should again
show their flags in the city. Thus no child in Notting Hill could play
about the streets without the very lamp-posts reminding him of the
salvation of his country in the dreadful year.

"Old Wayne was right in a way," commented the King. "The sword does
make things beautiful. It has made the whole world romantic by now.
And to think people once thought me a buffoon for suggesting a
romantic Notting Hill. Deary me, deary me! (I think that is the
expression)--it seems like a previous existence."

Turning a corner, he found himself in Pump Street, opposite the four
shops which Adam Wayne had studied twenty years before. He entered
idly the shop of Mr. Mead, the grocer. Mr. Mead was somewhat older,
like the rest of the world, and his red beard, which he now wore with
a moustache, and long and full, was partly blanched and discoloured.
He was dressed in a long and richly embroidered robe of blue, brown,
and crimson, interwoven with an Eastern complexity of pattern, and
covered with obscure symbols and pictures, representing his wares
passing from hand to hand and from nation to nation. Round his neck
was the chain with the Blue Argosy cut in turquoise, which he wore as
Grand Master of the Grocers. The whole shop had the sombre and
sumptuous look of its owner. The wares were displayed as prominently
as in the old days, but they were now blended and arranged with a
sense of tint and grouping, too often neglected by the dim grocers of
those forgotten days. The wares were shown plainly, but shown not so
much as an old grocer would have shown his stock, but rather as an
educated virtuoso would have shown his treasures. The tea was stored
in great blue and green vases, inscribed with the nine indispensable
sayings of the wise men of China. Other vases of a confused orange and
purple, less rigid and dominant, more humble and dreamy, stored
symbolically the tea of India. A row of caskets of a simple silvery
metal contained tinned meats. Each was wrought with some rude but
rhythmic form, as a shell, a horn,