Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/34

THE HILL OF DREAMS for the 'cosy' had been put over the pot, but it was black and bitter strong, as his cousin expressed it. The draught was unpalatable, but it did him good, and the thought came with great consolation that he had only been asleep and dreaming queer, nightmarish dreams. He shook off all his fancies with resolution, and thought the loneliness of the camp, and the burning sunlight, and possibly the nettle sting, which still tingled most abominably, must have been the only factors in his farrago of impossible recollections. He remembered that when he had felt the sting, he had seized a nettle with thick folds of his handkerchief, and having twisted off a good length, had put it in his pocket to show his father. Mr. Taylor was almost interested when he came in from his evening stroll about the garden and saw the specimen.

'Where did you manage to come across that, Lucian?' he said. 'You haven't been to Caermaen, have you?'

'No. I got it in the Roman fort by the common.'

'Oh, the twyn. You must have been trespassing then. Do you know what it is?'

'No. I thought it looked different from the common nettles.' 24