n--to
depict the Strand and Piccadilly, aglow with artificial light and
reverberating with the roll of countless traffic and the tread of
millions of feet.

"I failed. The incongruity of such imaginings here--here amidst
omnipotent silence--rendered such thoughts impossible. A leaf rustled,
and its rustling sounded to my ears like the gentle closing of some
giant door. A twig fell, and I turned sharply round, convinced I should
see a pile of broken debris. I love all trees, but I love them best by
day--to me it seems that night utterly metamorphizes them--brings out in
them a subtler, darker side one would little suspect. Here, in this oak,
for instance, was an example. In the morning one sees in it nought but
quiet dignity, venerable old age, benevolence, and, by reason of the
ample protection its branches afford from the sun, charity and
philanthropy. Its leaves are bright, dainty, pretty; its trunk suggests
nothing but a cosy and soothing retreat for students and lovers. But
now--see how different! These great spreading, gnarled branches are
hands, claws--monstrous and menacing; those leaves no longer bright
remind me of a hearse's plumes; their rustling--of the rustling and
switching of a pall or winding-sheet. The trunk, black, sinuous,
towering, is assuredly no piece of timber, but something pulpy,
something intangible, something antagonistic, mystic, devilish. I turn
from it and shudder. Then my mind reverts to the elm--the elm on which
Sir Algernon hanged himself. I remember it is not more than twenty yards
from where I stand. I stare down at the soil, at the clumps of crested
dog's-tail and stray blades of succulent darnel; I force my attention on
a toadstool, whose soft and lowly head gleams sickly white in the
moonbeams. I glance from it to a sleeping close-capped dandelion, from
it to a thistle, from it again to a late bush vetch, and then,
willy-nilly, to the accursed elm. My God! What a change. It wasn't like
that when I passed it at noon. It was just an ordinary tree then, but
now, now--and what is that--that sinister bundle--suspended from one
of its curling branches? A cold sweat bursts out on me, my knees
tremble, my hair begins to rise on end. Swinging round, I am about to
rush away--blindly rush away--hither, thither, anywhere--anywhere out of
sight of that tree and of all the hideous possibilities it promises to
materialize for me. I have not taken five strides, however, before I am
pulled sharply