parts of the town, at the railway station on one hand, at the cemetery and a tall chimney on the other. It had apparently not been occupied or for a little time only, and was now empty; or it had been used for a month at a time by perhaps half a dozen families; certainly it had never become a house; it was the corpse, the stillborn corpse of a house. Beyond it, between the two lines of elms and on either side of them, was the open country. The road was old, too, worn down like a river-bed into the sandy soil, and the elms above either side made it dark as it rose towards the north. I had not gone many yards along it when I came to a place where the bank had been excavated long ago. There was a smooth sandy floor, and behind that a firm wall of orange sand interlaced by the stony and snake-like roots of a great oak which towered up from the top of the wall; and behind the trunk the sun was a scarlet round in a dull sky at the moment of going down. It was dark and still in this hollowed place, and I had looked at it for some time before I heard the crying of a child and saw three children playing in the sand. Under the oak they had dug a cave in the sand, and a black-haired boy and a fair-haired girl were carrying away little spadefuls, while the third sat still among the roots. The two workers went silently backwards and forwards. They moved gravely and without a word, and I might have thought they were unaware of one another had they not made way for one another in their comings and goings. They worked as if in a dream and being moved by some unseen power. Their faces also were fixed and expressionless; their wide-open eyes seemed to be upon something which travelled always before them and was invisible to me. They were perhaps seven years old. The other was not more than three, and he took no notice of them as he sat, his face smeared with tears and sand, and a paper bag upon his lap. Now and then he burst out into a fresh sobbing cry just as suddenly, and not more loudly than the robin singing above his head. When he did this the little girl went up to him and shook him gently, and took a cherry from the paper bag and put it into his mouth. At this he became silent again for a little, holding the cherry-stone in one hand, and with the other rubbing his eyes. When this cure had been tried several times, and the scarlet sun had gone down out of the dull heavens, the child began to cry more steadily, and it was in vain that a cherry was put into his mouth; for he held it a little while between his lips, and did not notice when it fell out, but sobbed on and on as if he saw nothing, heard nothing, thought nothing, felt nothing, but only sobbed. I asked the little girl: “What is the matter with him?” “He wants his mother,” she said. “Where does he live?” I asked, as I stepped towards the child, meaning to lift him up. “Over there,” she replied, pointing with her eyes to the house of the verandah.