one great voice of exultation, the voice of freedom, the voice of
Ireland, the voice of the Waste; and the voice said 'Goodbye to you.
Goodbye!' and passed away into the distance; and as it passed, the
tame geese on the farms cried out to their brothers up above them
that they were free. Then the hills went away, and the bog and the
sky went with them, and I was alone again, as lost souls are alone.

Then there grew up beside me the red brick buildings of my first
school and the chapel that adjoined it. The fields a little way off
were full of boys in white flannels playing cricket. On the asphalt
playing ground, just by the schoolroom windows, stood Agamemnon,
Achilles, and Odysseus, with their Argives armed behind them; but
Hector stepped down out of a ground-floor window, and in the
schoolroom were all Priam's sons and the Achæans and fair Helen;
and a little farther away the Ten Thousand drifted across the
playground, going up into the heart of Persia to place Cyrus on his
brother's throne. And the boys that I knew called to me from the
fields, and said 'Goodbye,' and they and the fields went away; and
the Ten Thousand said 'Goodbye,' each file as they passed me
marching swiftly, and they too disappeared. And Hector and Agamemnon
said 'Goodbye,' and the host of the Argives and of the Achæans; and
they all went away and the old school with them, and I was alone
again.

The next scene that filled the emptiness was rather dim: I was being
led by my nurse along a little footpath over a common in Surrey. She
was quite young. Close by a band of gypsies had lit their fire, near
them their romantic caravan stood unhorsed, and the horse cropped
grass beside it. It was evening, and the gypsies muttered round
their fire in a tongue unknown and strange. Then they all said in