The fatal futility of Fact.

The visible world is but man turned inside out that he may be revealed to himself.

It was the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it waned; the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a low sombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and played over old wainscots, old tapestry, old gold, old colour.

Am I solemn? I had an idea I was grinning from ear to ear." "You look as if you were taking me to a prayer-meeting or a funeral. If that's a grin your ears are very near together." "Should you like me to dance a hornpipe on the deck?" "Pray do, and I'll carry round your hat. It'll pay the expenses of our journey.

The story had held us, round the fire, sufficiently breathless, but except the obvious remark that it was gruesome, as, on Christmas Eve in an old house, a strange tale should essentially be . . .

Take the word for it of a man who has made his way inch by inch, and does not believe that we'll wake up to find our work done because we've lain all night a-dreaming of it; anything worth doing is devilish hard to do!

People can be in general pretty well trusted, of course--with the clock of their freedom ticking as loud as it seems to do here--to keep an eye on the fleeting hour.