"
From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a
glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his
window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock,
so crystal was the air. He walked that morning for miles; he covered all
his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a
pleasure-house. Here was his dream, there was disappointment, here that
flaming discovery, there this sudden terror--nothing had changed for
him, the Moor, St. Arthe Church, St. Dreot Woods, the high white gates
and mysterious hidden park of Portcullis House--all were as though it
had been yesterday that he had last seen them. Polchester had dwindled
before his giant growth. Here the moor, the woods, the roads had grown,
and it was he that had shrunken.
At last he stood on the sand-dunes that bounded the moor and looked down
upon the marbled sand, blue and gold after the retreating tide. The
faint lisp and curdle of the sea sang to him. A row of sea-gulls, one
and then another quivering in the light, stood at the water's edge; the
stiff grass that pushed its way fiercely from the sand of the dunes was
white with hoar-frost, and the moon, silver now, and sharply curved,
came climbing behind the hill.
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