whisper of its moisture-laden airs; song of its swollen ditches,
brooks and runnels. It was not "Take down. It is done." It was "Take
down. It is beginning."

Mankind, frail parasite of doubt, seeks ever for a sign, conceives no
certainty but the enormous certitude of uncertainty. A sign! In death:
"Take down, then; but leave me this--and this--for memory. Perhaps--who
knows?--it may be true.... But leave me this for memory." In promise:
"So be it, then--but give me some pledge, some proof, some sign." Not
thus October. October spoke to Sabre of Nature's sublime imperviousness
to doubt; of her enormous certainty, old as creation, based in the sure
foundations of the world. "Take down. It is beginning."

Sabre used to think, "It gets you--terrifically. It's stupendous. It's
too big to bear." He had this thought out of October: "You can't,
_can't_ walk along lanes or in woods in October and see all this
mysterious business going on without knowing perfectly well that this
astounding certainty must apply equally to human life. I'd wish the
death of any one I loved to be in early autumn. No one can possibly
_doubt_ in early autumn. In winter, perhaps; and in spring and in summer
you can know, cynically, it will pass. But in October--no. Impossible
then. And not only death, Life. Life as one lives it. You can't, _can't_
feel in autumn that in the lowest depths there is lower yet. You only
can feel, _know_, that the thing will break, that there's an uplift at
the bottom of it all. There _must_ be."

III

Take down: it is beginning. The spirit and the message of the season (as
they communicated themselves to him) began, as opiate among enfevered
senses, to steal about his thoughts. Had anything happened? His feeling
was rather that he was at the beginning of something; or at the end of
something, which was the same thing. The place whereon he stood entered
into his thoughts. He had left the main road and was skirting through
the school precincts. He was crossing The Strip, historic sward whereon
were played the First XV football matches. Impossible to be upon The
Strip without peopling it again with the tremendous battles that had
been here, the giants of football who here had made their fame and the
school's fame; the crowded, tumultuous touch lines; the silent,
tremendous combat in between. Memories came to him of his own two
seasons in the XV; his own name from a thousand throats upon the wintry
air. His muscles taut