a few hundred yards.

He ascended the ladder to have one more look at the point the men
had designated, and perched himself on the highest rung, overlying
the tiles. He might not be able to come so far as this for many
days. Perhaps if he prayed, the wish to see Christminster might be
forwarded. People said that, if you prayed, things sometimes came to
you, even though they sometimes did not. He had read in a tract that
a man who had begun to build a church, and had no money to finish
it, knelt down and prayed, and the money came in by the next post.
Another man tried the same experiment, and the money did not come;
but he found afterwards that the breeches he knelt in were made by
a wicked Jew. This was not discouraging, and turning on the ladder
Jude knelt on the third rung, where, resting against those above it,
he prayed that the mist might rise.

He then seated himself again, and waited. In the course of ten or
fifteen minutes the thinning mist dissolved altogether from the
northern horizon, as it had already done elsewhere, and about a
quarter of an hour before the time of sunset the westward clouds
parted, the sun's position being partially uncovered, and the beams
streaming out in visible lines between two bars of slaty cloud. The
boy immediately looked back in the old direction.

Some way within the limits of the stretch of landscape, points of
light like the topaz gleamed. The air increased in transparency with
the lapse of minutes, till the topaz points showed themselves to be
the vanes, windows, wet roof slates, and other shining spots upon the
spires, domes, freestone-work, and varied outlines that were faintly
revealed. It was Christminster, unquestionably; either directly
seen, or miraged in the peculiar atmosphere.

The spectator gazed on and on till the windows and vanes lost their
shine, going out almost suddenly like extinguished candles. The
vague city became veiled in mist. Turning to the west, he saw that
the sun had disappeared. The foreground of the scene had grown
funereally dark, and near objects put on the hues and shapes of
chimaeras.

He anxiously descended the ladder, and started homewards at a run,
trying not to think of giants, Herne the Hunter, Apollyon lying in
wait for Christian, or of the captain with the bleeding hole in his
forehead and the corpses round him that remutinied every night on
board the bewitched ship. He knew that he had grown out of belief in
these