Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/21

 air just above him, waiting to pounce... to pounce...

"First Browning, then this other, the old book in a faded red-brown cover, "To Paradise! Frederick Lester" At the bottom of the title-page, 1892—how long ago! How faded and pathetic the old book was! He alone in all the British Isles at that moment reading it—certainly no other living soul—and he had crossed to Browning after Lester's third page.

He swung in mid-air. The open fields came swimming up to him like vast green waves, gently to splash upon his face, hanging over him, laced about the telegraph poles, rising and falling with them....

The voice of the old man with the long white beard, the only occupant of the carriage with him broke sharply in like a steel knife cutting through blotting-paper.

"Pardon me, but there is a spider on your neck."

Harkness started up. The two books slipped to the floor. He passed his hand, damp with the afternoon warmth, over his cool neck. He hated spiders. He shivered. His fingers were on the thing. With a shudder he flung it out of the window.

"Thank you," he said, blushing very slightly.

"Not at all," the old man said severely; "you