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two bites at a sandwich, Sammy had spoken with the factual simplicity of someone commenting on the weather. “‘We will fall into the hands of God, and not into the hands of men: for as His Majesty is, so is His mercy.’” Neil, continuing to eat in peaceful silence, had reflected in a remote kind of interest that at sea-level it would have been embarrassing.
    It had taken the measure of memory to show him that he was through. Standing on the same ridge, fifteen years later, he had known that this must be his last climb. Considering, indifferently, where to go from here, he had found the Wier View address in his pocket-book. It was one of several he had noted six years ago for his honeymoon, but rejected as not being good enough. It seemed, now, that it would do.
    His rubbed heel was growing tiresome; the blister must have broken. Perhaps after all there might be a tin of small dressings for this kind of purpose in one of his rucksack pockets; he had snatched it up, in the last stages of packing, and had flung in odds and ends on top of the debris of last year. He sat down with it on a bank of mossy grass, through which the ruins of a centuries-old stone wall broke here and there, and found that he was in luck. The tin was there, and heaven knew what rubbish besides. Something caught in his fingers as he fished about. He examined it; a small and very grubby handkerchief, edged with pale blue. It had been folded and pulled lengthways; two corners still showed the creases of an untied knot, and in the centre was a little brown stain, of the size that comes from a scratched ankle. One of the uncrumpled corners was decorated with the word “Tuesday,” and with a pink rabbit wearing a blue coat.
    Beside him on the bank, between the roots of a thorn-tree, was a heavy moss-topped stone. He prised it up, brushed from the cavity with careful thoroughness the creeping things disturbed by the light; and, having pressed the half-handful of cotton flat on the earth, replaced the stone. Opening the box of dressings, he attended to his heel.
    The plaster clung firmly; the pain of walking was relieved; the mind was left, less fortunately, disengaged. There remained the sometimes helpful expedient of Virgil. He began in his head, his feet marking the beats of the hexameters:
Nox erat, et placidum carpebant fessa soporem corpora per-terras, silvaeque et saeva quierant …
    He broke off; that had too many associations already. It had been a comfort, now and again, to have sleeplessness resolved into so calm a universal. Perhaps, he thought, the more positive effort of translation? He decided on an early nineteenth-century manner, further imposing on himself the problem of rhyme. By the time he had reached the edge of the town, it had become a not unpresentable effort: the kind of thing Byron might have torn up on an off day, as an undergraduate, having diverted himself while dressing for dinner. It had taken Neil all of two hours; but it had proved some sort of concentration to be within the grip of his will, which was something to go on with. Better still, during all this time the grey and gold hills, and the deepening sea, had ceased to trouble him. Except as a series of surfaces to be traversed, he had not been aware of the moors at all. He even passed the gate of Wier View without seeing it, and had to go back fifty yards. Preoccupied still as he walked into the garden, he did not see Miss Searle’s deck-chair till it was too late to retreat.
    Well, he thought, this was as good a time as any to begin recovering the social decencies. At the back of his mind, he recognised this moment as one of decision. If he failed to make the effort with which chance had confronted him, tomorrow would find him where he had been yesterday. In the end, the application to New Zealand would not be sent either; he had only a fortnight longer in which to put it off.
    Walking quietly across the lawn, he thought at a nearer approach that she was asleep; the