Out in the orchard a heavy mist wrapped him in wet folds of silver; yet overhead there was clear starlight, and he could watch the slow burnishing of the moon's face in her voyage up the sky. It was a queer country in which he found himself, where all the tree-tops seemed to be floating away from invisible trunks, and where for a while no sound was audible but his own footsteps making a music almost of violins in the saturated grass. The moon wrought upon the vapours a shifting damascene; and far behind, as it seemed, a rufous stain showed where the candles in his room were still alight. Gradually a variety of sounds began to play upon the silence. He could hear the dry squeak of a bat and cows munching in the meadows on the other side of the stream. The stream itself babbled and was still, babbled and was still; while along the bank voles were taking the water with splashes that went up and down a scale like the deep notes of a dulcimer. Far off, an owl hooted, an otter barked; and then as he crossed the middle of the orchard he was hearing nothing but apples fall with solemn thud, until the noise of the lock-gate swallowed all lighter sounds. Here the mist had temporarily dissolved, and in the moonlight he could see water gushing forth like an arch of lace and the long bramble-sprays combing the shallows below. Soon the orchard was left behind, and he was in the mist of a wide meadow, where all was silent again except for the faint sobbing of the grass to his footsteps. He walked straight into the moon's face, stumbling from time to time over molehills with an eery fragrance of fresh-turned soil, and wishing he could ever say in verse a little of the magic this autumnal night was shedding upon his fancy. "By gad, if I can't write here, I ought to be shot," he declared. The church-clock struck the half-hour as appositely as if his own father had said something about the need for hurrying up and showing what he could do. "Ah, but I'm not going to be hurried," said Guy aloud. And since the clock could not answer him again, it was as good as having the best of an argument.