Every morning the dwellers on the slopes are borne by the railway on a great span of arches over the little village, and they look down on the roofs of its houses. On the slopes there lies the world in which the fringes of life are embroidered--a world where men and women talk of books, pictures and plays. It is a world of hyphenated names. But in all the village there is not so much as one hyphenated name. It is a refuse-heap of humanity. Many diverse races are crowded in it. The city fathers clean out slums without providing first for the slum-dwellers, and, swept before the broom of so-called social reformers, homeless men and women have drifted to the village, and there reconstituted their slum. From the glens of the north broken Highlanders, driven out to make room for sheep, have drifted hither to work in the quarries, and the speech of their children's children still bears the trace of their ancient language pure and clean; over the sea Irishmen have come to reap the harvest fields of the Lothians, and they have been deposited by the tide in the village. Stray Poles have come hither and straggling Czechs; a man from Connemara neighbours a shaggy giant from Lewis; and a dour stone-cutter from Aberdeen is door by door with an Italian who sells what looks like a deadly mixture from a hand-cart. Here you can see humanity in its primitive state, before it began to adorn the fringes of life, and make for itself sanctuaries of privacy. Between the slopes and the base of the hill there yawns an invisible chasm. Centuries separate them. Thus it comes that the slope-dweller passes on the top of the arches, scanning his newspaper, without so much as seeing the huddle of houses which constitute the village. It is only a week ago that, like the old clerk, I took out a return ticket for the "Cities of the Plain." (For the old clerk had a two-fold formula. When he was going to one village he said, "Return, Sodom," but when he meant to go to the quarries beside the village he said, "Return, Cities of the Plain.") It was to visit an old soldier that I thus descended into the plains. He lives in a rookery in which many families are crowded one on the top of the other--a rabbit-warren infested by many and strange odours. He used to come up the slopes and do odd jobs, tidying up gardens, and he loved to talk of "unhappy far-off things And battles long ago," in a language which I also could speak. So I got to know him. And as I sat by his bed I heard a moan from the adjoining room. It began in a low cry, and then rose into a wail that seemed charged with all the woes of humanity. The old man sat up in bed trembling. The cry of woe now changed into a chorus; other voices swelled it. It was the act of a moment to open the door, and in the dim landing find the door of this other room.