of that portion of his existence which was bound into one by the
reticulations of memory.

For there dawned upon his mind the vision of one Sunday afternoon.
Betty had gone to church, and he was alone with his grandmother,
reading The Pilgrim's Progress to her, when, just as Christian
knocked at the wicket-gate, a tap came to the street door, and he
went to open it. There he saw a tall, somewhat haggard-looking man,
in a shabby black coat (the vision gradually dawned upon him till it
reached the minuteness of all these particulars), his hat pulled
down on to his projecting eyebrows, and his shoes very dusty, as
with a long journey on foot--it was a hot Sunday, he remembered
that--who looked at him very strangely, and without a word pushed
him aside, and went straight into his grandmother's parlour,
shutting the door behind him. He followed, not doubting that the
man must have a right to go there, but questioning very much his
right to shut him out. When he reached the door, however, he found
it bolted; and outside he had to stay all alone, in the desolate
remainder of the house, till Betty came home from church.

He could even recall, as he thought about it, how drearily the
afternoon had passed. First he had opened the street door, and
stood in it. There was nothing alive to be seen, except a sparrow
picking up crumbs, and he would not stop till he was tired of him.
The Royal Oak, down the street to the right, had not even a
horseless gig or cart standing before it; and King Charles, grinning
awfully in its branches on the signboard, was invisible from the
distance at which he stood. In at the other end of the empty
street, looked the distant uplands, whose waving corn and grass were
likewise invisible, and beyond them rose one blue truncated peak in