shut out, judged and condemned to wander in the frozen mist, with
weary feet, anguished and forlorn, and they that would pass from within
to help him could not, neither could he pass to them. Again, for the
hundredth time, he came back to the sentence: he could not gain the art
of letters and he had lost the art of humanity. He saw the vanity of all
his thoughts; he was an ascetic caring nothing for warmth and
cheerfulness and the small comforts of life, and yet he allowed his mind
to dwell on such things. If one of those passers-by, who walked briskly,
eager for home, should have pitied him by some miracle and asked him
to come in, it would have been worse than useless, yet he longed for
pleasures that he could not have enjoyed. It was as if he were come to a
place of torment, where they who could not drink longed for water, where
they who could feel no warmth shuddered in the eternal cold. He was
oppressed by the grim conceit that he himself still slept within the
matted thicket, imprisoned by the green bastions of the Roman fort. He
had never come out, but a changeling had gone down the hill, and now
stirred about the earth.

Beset by such ingenious terrors, it was not wonderful that outward events
and common incidents should abet his fancies. He had succeeded one day in
escaping from the mesh of the streets, and fell on a rough and narrow
lane that stole into a little valley. For the moment he was in a somewhat
happier mood; the afternoon sun glowed through the rolling mist, and
the air grew clearer. He saw quiet and peaceful fields, and a wood
descending in a gentle slope from an old farmstead of warm red brick. The
farmer was driving the slow cattle home from the hill, and his loud
halloo to his dog came across the land a cheerful mellow note. From
another side a cart was approaching the clustered barns, hesitating,
pausing while the great horses rested, and then starting again into lazy
motion. In the well of the valley a wandering line of bushes showed where
a brook crept in and out amongst the meadows, and, as Lucian stood,
lingering, on the bridge, a soft and idle breath ruffled through the
boughs of a great elm. He felt soothed, as by calm music, and wondered
whether it would not be better for him to live in some such quiet place,
within reach of the streets and yet remote from them. It seemed a refuge
for still thoughts; he could imagine himself sitting at rest beneath the
black yew tree in the farm garden,