rooms, together with much paper, scored with faded ink. The curtains
hung in shreds about the windows; a woman's cloak, of an antiquated
fashion, drooped from a nail behind the door. In an oak chest we
found a tumbled heap of yellow letters. They were of various dates,
extending over a period of four months; and with them, apparently
intended to receive them, lay a large envelope, inscribed with an
address in London that has since disappeared.

Strong curiosity overcoming faint scruples, we read them by the dull
glow of the burning juniper twigs, and, as we lay aside the last of
them, there rose from the depths below us a wailing cry, and all
night long it rose and died away, and rose again, and died away
again; whether born of our brain or of some human thing, God knows.

And these, a little altered and shortened, are the letters:-


Extract from first letter:

"I cannot tell you, my dear Joyce, what a haven of peace this place
is to me after the racket and fret of town. I am almost quite
recovered already, and am growing stronger every day; and, joy of
joys, my brain has come back to me, fresher and more vigorous, I
think, for its holiday. In this silence and solitude my thoughts
flow freely, and the difficulties of my task are disappearing as if
by magic. We are perched upon a tiny plateau halfway up the
mountain. On one side the rock rises almost perpendicularly,
piercing the sky; while on the other, two thousand feet below us, the
torrent hurls itself into the black waters of the fiord. The house
consists of two rooms--or, rather, it is two cabins connected by a