Then the village street came into view and he suddenly smelt the
fields and gardens that topped the hill beyond. The world turned gold
and amber, shining beneath a turquoise sky. There was a rush of
flaming sunsets, one upon another, followed by great green moons, and
hosts of stars that came twinkling across barred windows to his very
bedside ... that grand old Net of Stars he made so cunningly. Cornhill
and Lombard Street flashed back upon him for a second, then dived away
and hid their faces for ever, as he passed the low grey wall beside
the church where first he had seen the lame boy hobbling, and had
realised that the whole world suffered.

A moment he stood here, thinking. He heard the wind sighing in the yew
trees beside the dark brown porch. Rooks were cawing among the elms
across the churchyard, and pigeons wheeled and fluttered about the
grey square tower. The wind, the tower, the weather-stained old porch
--these had not changed. This sunshine and this turquoise sky were
still the same.

The village stopped at the churchyard--significant boundary. No single
building ventured farther; the houses ran the other way instead,
pouring down the steep hill in a cataract of bricks and roofs towards
the station. The hill, once topped, and the churchyard left behind, he
entered the world of fields and little copses. It was just like going
through a gateway. It was a Gateway. The road sloped gently down for
half-a-mile towards the pair of big iron gates that barred the drive
up to the square grey house upon whose lawns he once had chased
butterflies, but from whose upper windows he once had netted--stars.

The spell came over him very strongly then as he went slowly down that
road. The altered scale of distance confused him; the road had