the halfpenny illustrated
Press, were getting work done. Clayton was deaf and dumb. Some miles
away the smoke of the London train was streaming across the dim fields
like a comet. We both stood watching that comet going sure and bright
to its destiny, leaving Clayton behind, regardless of us, and as though
all we there were nothing worth. We were outside the pull of life's
spinning hub. Beyond and remote from us things would be happening; but
no voice or pulse of life could vibrate us, merged as we were within
the inelastic silence of Clayton.

We walked back to the village, and the boy said good-night, passing
through a white gate to a cottage unseen at that late hour of the
evening. Near midnight I left my stuffed birds, with their fixed and
upturned gaze, and went into the open, where above the shapeless lumps
of massive dark of Clayton the stars were detaching their arrows, for
the night was clear and frosty at last. Sirius, pulsing and
resplendent, seemed nearer and more vital than anything in the village.

I walked as far as the white gate of the cottage where I had left Mr.
Monk's boy; and there he was again, to my surprise, at that hour. He
came forward. At first he appeared to be agitated; but as he talked
brokenly I saw he was exalted. He was no grocer's boy then. The lad
half dragged me, finding I did not understand him, towards his home. We
went round to the back of the sleeping cottage, and found a little
shed. On a bench in that shed a candle was burning in a ginger-beer
bottle. By the candle was a structure meaningless to me, having nothing
of which I could make a guess. It was fragmentary and idle, the
building which a child makes of household utensils, naming it anything
to its fancy. There were old jam-pots, brass door-knobs, squares of
india-rubber, an electric bell, glass rods, cotton reels, and thin
wires which ran up to the roof out of sight.

"Listen!" said the grocer's boy imperatively, holding up a finger. I
remained intent and suspicious, wondering. Nothing happened. I was
turning to ask the lad why I should listen, for the shed was very
still, and then I saw the hammer of the bell lift itself, as though
alive. Some erratic and faint tinkling began. "That's my wireless,"
said the grocer's boy, his eyes extraordinarily bright. "I've only just
finished it. Who is calling us?"

III. Old Junk

Business had brought the two of us to an inn on the West Coast, and all
its windows opened