its proper grown- up proportions, but how can a man, be he come to
threescore and ten and more, ever forget the size, the splendour,
the stupendous extravagance of that early vision?

Jeremy saw that day the old fragment of castle wall, the green
expanse falling like a sheeted waterfall from the Cathedral heights,
the blue line of river flashing in the evening sun between the bare-
boughed trees, the long spaces of black shadow spreading slowly over
the colour, as though it were all being rolled up and laid away for
another day; the brown frosty path of the Rope Walk, the farther
bank climbing into fields and hedges, ending in the ridge of wood,
black against the golden sky. And all so still! As the children
stood there they could catch nestlings' faint cries, stirrings of
dead leaves and twigs, as birds and beasts moved to their homes; the
cooing of the rooks about the black branches seemed to promise that
this world should be for ever tranquil, for ever cloistered and
removed; the sun, red and flaming above the dark wood, flung white
mists hither and thither to veil its departure. The silence
deepened, the last light flamed on the river and died upon the hill.

"Now, children, come along do," said the Jampot who had been held in
spite of herself, and would pay for it, she knew, in rheumatism to-
morrow. It was then that Jeremy's God-flung sense of power, born
from that moment early in the day when he had sat in the wicker
chair, reached its climax. He stood there, his legs apart, looking
upon the darkening world and felt that he could do anything--
anything. . .

At any rate, there was one thing that he could do, disobey the
Jampot.