days must end at last! ) He got his candle in the hall from a
friendly waiting-maid, and passed upward--whither a modest
novelist, who writes for the family circle, dare not follow. Yet
I may tell you that he knelt down at his bedside, happy and
drowsy, and said, "Our Father 'chartin' heaven," even as he had
learnt it by rote from his mother nearly twenty years ago. And
anon when his breathing had become deep and regular, we may creep
into his bedroom and catch him at his dreams. He is lying upon
his left side, with his arm under the pillow. It is dark, and he
is hidden; but if you could have seen his face, sleeping there in
the darkness, I think you would have perceived, in spite of that
treasured, thin, and straggling moustache, in spite of your
memory of the coarse words he had used that day, that the man
before you was, after all, only a little child asleep.



THE DREAMS OF MR. HOOPDRIVER

XII

In spite of the drawn blinds and the darkness, you have just seen
Mr. Hoopdriver's face peaceful in its beauty sleep in the little,
plain bedroom at the very top of the Yellow Hammer Coffee Tavern
at Guildford. That was before midnight. As the night progressed
he was disturbed by dreams.

After your first day of cycling one dream is inevitable. A memory
of motion lingers in the muscles of your legs, and round and
round they seem to go. You ride through Dreamland on wonderful