Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/216

 by one, left their tufts of grass and caught higher refuge, first a projecting rock, then a thick hummock of soil, then a bunch of sea-pinks. In another while, his heart now beating again with a new excited anticipation, his head lurched forward on the earth into space. With a last frantic urge he pulled all his body together and lay huddled on the path safe once more.

He had now a new trouble because his body refused to move. He had no body, nothing that he could count upon for action. He tried to find his connection with it, endeavoured to rest upon his knees, but it was as though he had been all dissipated into the fog and was turned, himself now, into mist and vapour. Then this passed, and once more he crawled forward.

He turned a corner and met again the Liddon bell. It was strange how deeply this voice reassured him. He had been all alone in a world utterly dead. He had not had, like Hardy's hero, the sight of the crustacean to connect him with eternal life. But this sudden, melancholy, lowing sound like a creature deserted, crying for its mate, brought him once more into reality. The bell was insistent and very loud. It swung through the fog up to him, ringing in his ear, then fading away again into distance. He spoke aloud as men do when they are in desperate straits: "Well, old bell," he cried, "I'm not beaten yet, you see. They've done what they