Outside, over the swelling undulations of rich grass the sheep came back with close-cropped, ungainly bodies to a land that was yellow with buttercups. But when one looked again, their wool hung about them, and they were snatching at short turf that was covered at the wood-side by a sprinkle of brown leaves. Then the sheep have gone, and the wood is black with February rain, and again the unfolding of the year is about us; a thickening of high twigs in the wood, a glint of green on the blackthorn.... Nearly three cycles of death and birth have run their course, and then the strange little figure comes no more to the library at Challis Court. PART III MY ASSOCIATION WITH THE WONDER CHAPTER XIII HOW I WENT TO PYM TO WRITE A BOOK I The circumstance that had intrigued me for so long was determined with an abruptness only less remarkable than the surprise of the onset. Two deaths within six months brought to me, the first, a competence, the second, release from gall and bitterness. For the first time in my life I was a free man. At forty one can still look forward, and I put the past behind me and made plans for the future. There was that book of mine still waiting to be written. It was wonderful how the detail of it all came back to me--the plan of it, the thread of development, even the very phrases that I had toyed with. The thought of the book brought back a train of associations. There was a phrase I had coined as I had walked out from Ailesworth to Stoke-Underhill; a chapter I had roughed out the day I went to see Ginger Stott at Pym. It seemed to me that the whole conception of the book was associated in some way with that neighbourhood. I remembered at last that I had first thought of writing it after my return from America, on the day that I had had that curious experience with the child in the train. It occurred to me that by a reversal of the process, I might regain many more of my original thoughts; that by going to live, temporarily perhaps, in the neighbourhood of Ailesworth, I might revive other associations. The picture of Pym presented itself to me very clearly. I remembered that I had once thought that Pym was a place to which I might retire one day in order to write the things I wished to write. I decided to make the dream a reality, and I wrote to Mrs. Berridge at the Wood Farm, asking her if she could let me have her rooms for the spring, summer, and autumn. II I was all aglow with excitement on the morning that I set out for the Hampden Hills. This was change, I thought, freedom, adventure. This was the beginning of life, my real entry into the joy of living. The world was alight with the fire of growth. May had come with a clear sky and a torrent of green was flowing over field, hedge, and wood. I remember that I thanked "whatever gods there be," that one could live so richly in the enjoyment of these things. III