"What's the matter?" he asked.

"This isn't the Street of the Consolation," said Lewis, dismayed.
"Where's the big cotton-tree and the priest's house, and--and the
bamboos? Where are the bamboos?"

The driver looked around curiously.

"I remember them, the bamboos," he said, nodding. "They're gone."

"Wait here," said Lewis.

He stepped out of the car and started to walk slowly up the hill. He
felt a strange sinking of the heart. In his day there had been no
sidewalk, only a clay path, beaten hard by the feet of three children on
their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud
_taipa_ wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house.
In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos,
forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the
wonder realm of childhood.

He came to the spot where the gate to Consolation Cottage had been. The
old wooden gate and the two friendly, square brick pillars on which it
had swung were gone; but in their stead rose a wondrous structure of
scrolled wrought iron between two splendid granite shafts.

Lewis stood on tiptoe and gazed through the gate, up the driveway, to
where Consolation Cottage had once stood. Through the tepid haze of a
beautiful tropical garden he saw a high villa. It did not look back at
him. It seemed to be watching steadily from its hilltop the spread of