moonrise on what was, perhaps, a similar night to that of his adventure.
Jupiter was great and splendid above the moon, and in the north
and northwest the sky was green and vividly bright over the sunken
sun. The Knoll stands out bare and bleak under the sky, but surrounded
at a little distance by dark thickets, and as I went up towards it
there was a mighty starting and scampering of ghostly or quite
invisible rabbits. Just over the crown of the Knoll, but nowhere else,
was a multitudinous thin trumpeting of midges. The Knoll is, I believe,
an artificial mound, the tumulus of some great prehistoric chieftain,
and surely no man ever chose a more spacious prospect for a sepulchre.
Eastward one sees along the hills to Hythe, and thence across
the Channel to where, thirty miles and more perhaps, away, the great
white lights by Gris Nez and Boulogne wink and pass and shine.
Westward lies the whole tumbled valley of the Weald, visible as far
as Hindhead and Leith Hill, and the valley of the Stour opens
the Downs in the north to interminable hills beyond Wye. All
Romney Marsh lies southward at one's feet, Dymchurch and Romney
and Lydd, Hastings and its hill are in the middle distance, and
the hills multiply vaguely far beyond where Eastbourne rolls up
to Beachy Head.

And out upon all this it was that Skelmersdale wandered, being troubled
in his earlier love affair, and as he says, "not caring WHERE he went."
And there he sat down to think it over, and so, sulking and grieving,
was overtaken by sleep. And so he fell into the fairies' power.

The quarrel that had upset him was some trivial matter enough
between himself and the girl at Clapton Hill to whom he was engaged.
She was a farmer's daughter, said Skelmersdale, and "very respectable,"
and no doubt an excellent match for him; but both girl and lover