Page:Arthur Machen - The Hill of Dreams.djvu/35

THE HILL OF DREAMS 'Yes; it's a Roman nettle—urtica pilulifera. It's a rare plant. Burrows says it's to be found at Caermaen, but I was never able to come across it. I must add it to the flora of the parish.'

Mr. Taylor had begun to compile a flora accompanied by a hortus siccus, but both stayed on high shelves dusty and fragmentary. He put the specimen on his desk, intending to fasten it in the book, but the maid swept it away, dry and withered, in a day or two.

Lucian tossed and cried out in his sleep that night, and the awakening in the morning was, in a measure, a renewal of the awakening in the fort. But the impression was not so strong, and in a plain room it seemed all delirium, a phantasmagoria. He had to go down to Caermaen in the afternoon, for Mrs. Dixon, the vicar's wife, had 'commanded' his presence at tea. Mr. Dixon, though fat and short and clean shaven, ruddy of face, was a safe man, with no extreme views on anything. He 'deplored' all extreme party convictions, and thought the great needs of our beloved Church were conciliation, moderation, and above all 'amolgamation'—so he pronounced the word. Mrs. Dixon was tall, imposing, splendid, well fitted for the episcopal order, with gifts 25