Page:The Chronicle of Clemendy.pdf/18

 that had been so shining and distinct became dim and obscure, the distant images, radiant and glowing, grew phantasmal, uncertain. For many months I wandered in an obscure wood, having lost the path, wondering often enough if there ever had been a path. I racked my brain to find a medium, a vehicle for the vision, trying now one form, now another, and meeting with no success at all, but stubbornly persisting nevertheless.

The book that had these beginnings in dim, languid Clarendon Road was continued and ended in a very different scene. In the autumn of 1885, having had a narrow escape from starvation, I returned to my old home, Llanddewi—you pronounce, "Llanthowy"—Rectory in Gwent, or Monmouthshire. The Rectory is almost at the summit of a long hill that winds by deep lanes up the four miles from CaerlemCaerleon [sic]-on-Uske. Its front windows look out over deep orchards, over deep narrow valleys and wooded hills, over sparse white farms shining in the sun, even to the wall of Wentwood, the remnant, still considerable, of the great and ancient forest of