THE HILL OF DREAMS

by

ARTHUR MACHEN

1907







I


There was a glow in the sky as if great furnace doors were opened.

But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in
fairyland. The holidays were nearly done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out
resolved to lose himself, to discover strange hills and prospects that he
had never seen before. The air was still, breathless, exhausted after
heavy rain, and the clouds looked as if they had been molded of lead. No
breeze blew upon the hill, and down in the well of the valley not a dry
leaf stirred, not a bough shook in all the dark January woods.

About a mile from the rectory he had diverged from the main road by an
opening that promised mystery and adventure. It was an old neglected
lane, little more than a ditch, worn ten feet deep by its winter waters,