same time--the whole houseful of them, and this is the only boy that was
left."

The MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was reposing in the bag under our feet.

I saw again the sun setting on the plains as I saw it in the travels of
my childhood. It set, clear and red, dipping into the snow in full view
as if it were setting on the sea. It was twenty-three years since I had
seen the sun set over that land; and we drove on in the darkness which
fell swiftly upon the livid expanse of snows till, out of the waste of a
white earth joining a bestarred sky, surged up black shapes, the clumps
of trees about a village of the Ukrainian plain. A cottage or two glided
by, a low interminable wall and then, glimmering and winking through a
screen of fir-trees, the lights of the master's house.

That very evening the wandering MS. of "Almayer's Folly" was unpacked
and unostentatiously laid on the writing-table in my room, the
guest-room which had been, I was informed in an affectedly careless
tone, awaiting me for some fifteen years or so. It attracted no
attention from the affectionate presence hovering round the son of the
favourite sister.

"You won't have many hours to yourself while you are staying with me,
brother," he said--this form of address borrowed from the speech of
our peasants being the usual expression of the highest good humour in
a moment of affectionate elation. "I shall be always coming in for a
chat."

As a matter of fact we had the whole house to chat in, and were
everlastingly intruding upon each other. I invaded the retirement of