"You'll do nothing of the kind," said Dickson. "You're coming home to your supper. It was to be on the chap of nine."

 

"I'm going back to that place."

 

The man was clearly demented and must be humoured. "Well, you must wait till the morn's morning. It's very near dark now, and those are two ugly customers wandering about yonder. You'd better sleep the night on it."

 

Mr. Heritage seemed to be persuaded. He suffered himself to be led up the now dusky slopes to the gate where the road from the village ended. He walked listlessly like a man engaged in painful reflection. Once only he broke the silence.

 

"You heard the singing?" he asked.

 

Dickson was a very poor hand at a lie. "I heard something," he admitted.

 

"You heard a girl's voice singing?"

 

"It sounded like that," was the admission. "But I'm thinking it might have been a seagull."

 

"You're a fool," said the Poet rudely.

 

The return was a melancholy¹ business, compared to the bright speed of the outward journey. Dickson's mind was a chaos² of feelings, all of them unpleasant. He had run up against something[Pg 71] which he violently, blindly detested³, and the trouble was that he could not tell why. It was all perfectly⁴ absurd, for why on earth should an ugly house, some overgrown trees and a couple of ill-favoured servants so malignly⁵ affect him? Yet this was the fact; he had strayed out of Arcady into a sphere that filled him with revolt and a nameless fear. Never in his experience had he felt like this, this foolish childish panic which took all the colour and zest⁶ out of life. He tried to laugh at himself but failed. Heritage, stumbling alone by his side, effectually crushed his effort to discover humour in the situation. Some exhalation from that infernal place had driven the Poet mad. And then that voice singing! A seagull, he had said. More like a nightingale, he reflected—a bird which in the flesh he had never met.

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