60 LODGES IN THE WILDERNESS 



These were fragments of the ravaged locks of 

 Typhon — locks torn out in his fury of yester- 

 day and flung far and wide over the desert. 



How still it was ; how void my environment 

 of the details of ordinary experience. It was 

 like a ramble through dreamland. The whirr- 

 ing wheels of Time seemed to have become 

 dislocated; each as it were turning reversed 

 on its axis — no two moving at the same speed. 

 It seemed as though the mill of which sequence 

 is a product had fallen out of gear, for yester- 

 day joined hands with a day of twenty years 

 old, while the intervening myriads of days flew 

 forth into the void like chaff from a winnower. 



Space seemed to have taken on additional 

 dimensions, — the impossible to have become 

 actual without an effort. Faces glimmered up 

 through the mists that hung over the dimming 

 pathway of the past — through the steam of 

 long-shed tears — through the ghastly coffin-lid 

 and the horrible six feet of clay. They smiled 

 for an instant, and vanished. Winds that had 

 slept for years arose laden with the laughter 

 from lips whose warm red faded with dawns 

 long overblown. Surely I must have strayed 

 into some pallid Hades such as the ancients 

 fabled of, — some zone where shadows only 

 were real and real things appeared as shadows. 



