The Hill of Dreams

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody, and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, “just like the dog when he’s had a whipping...

He had been driven out that day as with whips, another hopeless attempt to return to the work had agonised him, and existence seemed an intolerable pain. As he entered the deepe...

Lucian was mildly amused; he couldn’t enter into his father’s feelings at all. He sat smoking in one of the old easy chairs, taking the rare relish of a hot grog with his pipe,...

And he retraced his wanderings in those deep old lanes that began from the common road and went away towards the unknown, climbing steep hills, and piercing the woods of shadows...

He walked amongst these people, looked at their faces, and looked at the children amongst them. He had come out thinking that he would see the English working class, “the best-b...

But all the afternoon his eyes had looked on glamour; he had strayed in fairyland. The holidays were nearly done, and Lucian Taylor had gone out resolved to lose himself, to dis...

“Yes, Mr. Taylor, there is something for you, sir,” said the man. “William the postman forgot to take it up this morning,” and he handed over the packet. Lucian took it under hi...

Again and again he gave thanks for his own escape; he had been set free from a life of vice and sin and folly, from all the dangers and illusions that are most dreaded by the wi...

He thought that such happy mornings well repaid him for the anguish of depression which he sometimes had to suffer, and for the strange experience of “possession” recurring at r...

He remembered his wanderings amongst these outposts of the town, and thought how desolate all their ways must be tonight. They were solitary in wet and wind, and only at long in...

And yet there was something more; besides the logical thought, which was often a hindrance, a troublesome though inseparable accident, besides the sensation, always a pleasure a...

Lucian knew nothing of his accuser’s trials, but he was not long in hearing of his own intoxication. The next time he went down to Caermaen he was hailed by the doctor.

All these journeys of his to Caermaen and its neighborhood had a peculiar object; he was gradually leveling to the dust the squalid kraals of modern times, and rebuilding the sp...

And then he began to dream, to let his fancies stray over half-imagined, delicious things, indulging a virgin mind in its wanderings. The hot air seemed to beat upon him in palp...

For many months he had occasional fits of recollection, both cold and hot; but the bridge of time, gradually lengthening, made those dreadful and delicious images grow more and...

He remembered something of his escape from the desolation and the worse than desolation that had obsessed him during that first winter in London. He had gone free one bleak morn...