I WAS away about five weeks. I wrote my special articles on the condition of the Lancashire cotton industry (Severn, by the way, had secured me the commission), and from time to time I went into Manchester and called at the post-office for letters. Terry didn't write, but I wasn't surprised at that. What did surprise me was a short note from Mrs. Severn. She wanted me to dine at the End House on the twelfth, if I were back in town on that date. Terry, she said, would be coming as well. (Had she begun calling him "Terry," I wondered?) She went on to inform me about the cat, and she wrote: "I think it is rather wonderful of him to have thought of such a thing. It shows that he is _beginning_ to be human." All the rest of that sombre Manchester day I kept repeating to myself: He is beginning to be human.... When I returned to town I wondered if he was. _Something_ had happened to him, at any rate; there was a difference in him, slight, indeed, but plain enough. A sort of eagerness for something.... I reached London late on Saturday night, and early on Sunday he presented himself at my bedside and demanded that I should accompany him on one of his usual Sabbath tramps. For nobody else on earth would I have roused myself that morning, and not even for him, I believe, but for that curious, wistful eagerness. It was Epping Forest this time. We walked from Chingford to Loughton, had lunch, walked on to Epping, had tea, and then walked on to Waltham--total, fourteen miles. But I enjoyed it more than I had expected, for the day was spring-like, full of blue sky and white clouds and the smell of earth. Most of the way as far as Epping I talked of my Lancashire adventures, and it was not until after tea that he spoke more than a few consecutive sentences. The dusk sank over us as we walked the last stage through the Forest, treading the sodden leaves of the old year and guiding ourselves by glimpses of Waltham's white tower in the valley below. But I think it was the bells that made him suddenly talk--the Abbey bells that flung us their distant echo as we descended. For he said, when a cool wave of air brought them very near to us: "It's strange how beauty, if you're in a certain mood, comes over you. You can't help it--it comes anyhow, just when and where it likes.... Those bells--to hear them like this--and all this Forest with the winding pathways through it, and the little lamp-lit town that we shall come to in half-an-hour." A group of men and girls approached, heralded by the glow-worm brightness of the men's cigarettes, and he waited till they had gone past. Then he went on: "Don't you think it's strange that I should talk like this?" Before I could answer he continued: "It _is_ strange. Everything is strange. There's something strange in this Forest to-night--something beautiful, and yet, in a way, sad. I feel that if I didn't fight against it, it would swamp me.... Are you thinking me off my head?"