Of the miscellaneous stories in which Mr Kipling surrenders utterly to this later theme perhaps the most memorable is _An Habitation Enforced_ from _Actions and Reactions_. Here we are in quite another plane of authorship from that in which we have moved in the tales of India. There is a wide difference between _The Return of Imray_--to take one of the most skilful tales of India--and _An Habitation Enforced_. _The Return of Imray_ betrays the conscious resolution of a clever man of letters to make the most effective use of good material. But _An Habitation Enforced_ is the spontaneous gesture of pure feeling. The Indian stories are ingenious and well managed. Their point is made. Their workmanship is excellent. Atmospheres and impressions are cunningly arranged. But they very rarely succeed in carrying the reader as the reader is carried upon this later tide. The feeling of _An Habitation Enforced_, as of all the English tales, is that of the traveller returned. The value of Mr Kipling's traffics and discoveries over the seven seas is less in the record he has made of these adventures than in their having enabled him to return to England with eyes sharpened by exile, with his senses alert for that fourth dimension which does not exist for the stranger. _An Habitation Enforced_ is inspired by the nostalgia of inveterate banishment. Some part of its perfection--it is one of the few perfect short stories in the English tongue--is due to the perfect agreement of its form with the passion that informs its writing. It is the story of a homing Englishwoman, and of her restoration to the absolute earth of her forbears. In writing of this woman Mr Kipling has only had to recall his own joyful adventure in picking up the threads of a life at once familiar and mysterious, in meeting again the homely miracle of things that never change. Finally England claims her utterly--her and her children and her American husband. It was an American who bade Cloke, man of the soil and acquired retainer of the family, bring down larch-poles for a light bridge over the brook; but it was an Englishman reclaimed who needs consented to Cloke's amendment: "'But where the deuce are the larch-poles, Cloke? I told you to have them down here ready.' "'We'll get 'em down _if_ you, say so,' Cloke answered, with a thrust of the underlip they both knew. "'But I did say so. What on earth have you brought that timber-tug here for? We aren't building a railway bridge. Why, in America, half-a-dozen two-by-four bits would be ample.' "'I don't know nothin' about that,' said Cloke. 'An' I've nothin' to say against larch--_if_ you want to make a temp'ry job of it. I ain't 'ere to tell you what isn't so, sir; an' you can't say I ever come creepin' up on you, or tryin' to lead you farther in than you set out----' "A year ago George would have danced with impatience. Now he scraped a little mud off his old gaiters with his spud, and waited.