s, the rabbits on the edge of the beechwoods foraging
in the clover, and the policeman-like white owl stooping to the little
fieldmice, till the moon was strong, and he took his rod apart, and went
home through well-remembered gaps in the hedges. He fetched a compass
round the house, for, though he might have broken every law of the
establishment every hour, the law of his boyhood was unbreakable: after
fishing you went in by the south garden back-door, cleaned up in the
outer scullery, and did not present yourself to your elders and your
betters till you had washed and changed.

"Half-past ten, by Jove! Well, we'll make the sport an excuse. They
wouldn't want to see me the first evening, at any rate. Gone to bed,
probably." He skirted by the open French windows of the drawing-room.
"No, they haven't. They look very comfy in there."

He could see his father in his own particular chair, the mother in
hers, and the back of a girl at the piano by the big potpourri-jar. The
gardens looked half divine in the moonlight, and he turned down through
the roses to finish his pipe.

A prelude-ended, and there floated out a voice of the kind that in his
childhood he used to call "creamy" a full, true contralto; and this is
the song that he heard, every syllable of it:

Over the edge of the purple down,
Where the single lamplight gleams,
Know ye the road to the Merciful Town
That is hard by the Sea of Dreams--
Where the poor may lay their wrongs away,
And the sick may forget to weep?
But we--pity us! Oh, pity us!
We wakeful; ah, pity us!--
We must go back with Policeman Day--
Back from the City of Sleep!

Weary they turn from the scroll and crown,
Fetter and prayer and plough
They that go up to the Merciful Town,
For her gates are closing now.
It is their right in the Baths of Night
Body and soul to steep
But we--pity us! ah, pity us!
We wakeful; oh, pity us!--
We must go back with Policeman Day--
Back from the City of Sleep!

Over the edge of the purple down,
Ere the tender dreams begin,
Look--we may look--at the Merciful Town,
But we may not enter in!
Outcasts all, from her guarded wall
Back to our watch we creep:
We--pity us! ah, pity us!
We wakeful; oh, pity us!--
We that go back with Policeman Day--
Back from the City of Sleep

At the last echo he was aware tha