contained. Whiskey brings out in some men melancholy, in some
rejoicing, with him it was clearly generosity and he insisted until I
took his rum, though I did not mean to drink it. It was lonely up
there, he said, and bitter cold and the city hard to find, being set
in a hollow, and I should need the rum, and he had never seen the
marble city except on days when he had had his flask: he seemed to
regard that rusted iron flask as a sort of mascot, and in the end I
took it.

I followed that odd, faint track on the black earth under the heather
till I came to the big grey stone beyond the horizon, where the track
divides into two, and I took the one to the left as the old man told
me. I knew by another stone that I saw far off that I had not lost my
way, nor the old man lied.

And just as I hoped to see the city's ramparts before the gloaming
fell on that desolate place, I suddenly saw a long high wall of
whiteness with pinnacles here and there thrown up above it, floating
towards me silent and grim as a secret, and knew it for that evil
thing the mist. The sun, though low, was shining on every sprig of
heather, the green and scarlet mosses were shining with it too, it
seemed incredible that in three minutes' time all those colours would
be gone and nothing left all round but a grey darkness. I gave up hope
of finding the city that day, a broader path than mine could have been
quite easily lost. I hastily chose for my bed a thick patch of
heather, wrapped myself in a waterproof cloak, and lay down and made
myself comfortable. And then the mist came. It came like the careful
pulling of lace curtains, then like the drawing of grey blinds; it
shut out the horizon to the north, then to the east and west; it
turned the whole sky white and hid the moor; it came down on it like a