I am an
escaped inhabitant of the Permanent Casualty Ward. Bother. I wish he
didn't."

"Since it's obvious," said Rodney, "that you can't stand, let alone walk,
I had better go on to Montelupo and fetch a carriage of sorts. I wonder
if you can lie there quietly till I come back, or if you'll be having
seizures and things? Well, I can't help it. I must go, anyhow. There's
the whisky on your left."

Peter watched him go; he went at seven miles an hour; the dust ruffled
and leapt at his heels.

Peter sat very still leaning back against the rough white wall, and
thought what a pity it all was. What a pity, and what a bore, that one
could not do things like other people. Short of being an Urquhart, who
could do everything and had everything, whose passing car flamed
triumphant and lit the world into a splendid joy, and was approved under
investigation with "quite all right"--short of that glorious competence
and pride of life, one might surely be an average man, who could walk
from San Pietro to Florence without tumbling on the road at dawn. Peter
sighed over it, rather crossly. The marvellous morning was insulted by
his collapse; it became a remote thing, in which he might have no share.
As always, the inexorable "Not for you" rose like a barred gate between
him and the lucid country the white road threaded.

Peter in the dust began to whistle softly, to cheer himself, and because
he was really feeling better, and because anyhow, for him or not for him,
the land at dawn was a golden and glorious thing, and he loved it. What
did it matter whether he could walk through it or not? There it lay,
magical, clear-hewn, bathed in golden sunrise.

Round the turn of the road a bent figure came, stepping slowly and with
age, a woodstack on his back. Heavier even than a knapsack containing a
spirit kettle and a Decameron and biscuit remainders in a paper bag, it
must be. Peter watched the slow figure sympathetically. Would he sway and
topple over; and if he did would the woodstack break his fall? The whisky
flask stood ready on Peter's left.

Peter stopped whistling to watch; then he became aware that once more the
hidden distances were jarring and humming. He sat upright, and waited; a
little space of listening, then once again the sungod's chariot stormed
into the morning.

Peter watched it grow in size. How extremely fortunate.... Even though
one was again, as usual, found collapsed and absurd.

The woodstack pursued its