retinue
of workers mourns him now; I only know who is lord there today in
all those empty chambers. For as soon as I entered, I saw a whole
wall draped with his marvellous black tapestry, without price
because inimitable and too delicate to pass from hand to hand among
merchants. I looked at the wonderful complexity of its infinite
threads, my finger sank into it for more than an inch without
feeling the touch; so black it was and so carefully wrought,
sombrely covering the whole of the wall, that it might have been
worked to commemorate the deaths of all that ever lived there, as
indeed it was. I looked through a hole in the wall into an inner
chamber where a worn-out driving band went among many wheels, and
there this priceless inimitable stuff not merely clothed the walls
but hung from bars and ceiling in beautiful draperies, in marvellous
festoons. Nothing was ugly in this desolate house, for the busy
artist's soul of its present lord had beautified everything in its
desolation. It was the unmistakable work of the spider, in whose
house I was, and the house was utterly desolate but for him, and
silent but for the roar of the Wrellis and the shout of the little
stream. Then I turned homewards; and as I went up and over the hill
and lost the sight of the village, I saw the road whiten and harden
and gradually broaden out till the tracks of wheels appeared; and it
went afar to take the young men of Wrellisford into the wide ways of
the earth--to the new West and the mysterious East, and into the
troubled South.

And that night, when the house was still and sleep
was far off, hushing hamlets and giving ease to cities, my fancy
wandered up that aimless road and came suddenly to Wrellisford. And
it seemed to me that the travelling of so many people for so many
years between Wrellisford and John o' Groat's, talking to one
another as they went or muttering alone, had given the road a voice.
And it seemed to me that night that the road spoke to the river by
Wrellisford bridge, speaking with the voice of many pilgrims. And
the road said to the river: 'I rest here. How is it with you?'

And the river, who is always speaking, said: 'I rest nowhere from
doing the Work of the World. I carry the murmur of inner lands to
the sea, and to the abysses voices of the hills.'

'It is I,' said the road, 'that do the Work of the World, and take
from city to city the rumour of each. There is nothing higher than
Man and the m