And the truth is that I had one eye on an ancient and timeless clock, hung
uselessly in heaven; whose very name has passed into a figure for such
bemused folly. In the true sense of an ancient phrase, I was moonstruck.
A lunar landscape a scene of winter moonlight had inexplicably got in
between me and all other scenes. If any one had asked me I could not have
said what it was; I cannot say now. Nothing had occurred to me; except
the breakdown of a hired motor on the ridge of a hill. It was not an
adventure; it was a vision.
I had started in wintry twilight from my own door; and hired a small car
that found its way across the hills towards Naphill. But as night
blackened and frost brightened and hardened it I found the way
increasingly difficult; especially as the way was an incessant ascent.
Whenever we topped a road like a staircase it was only to turn into a yet
steeper road like a ladder.
At last, when I began to fancy that I was spirally climbing the Tower of
Babel in a dream, I was brought to fact by alarming noises, stoppage, and
the driver saying that "it couldn't be done." I got out of the car and
suddenly forgot that I had ever been in it.
From the edge of that abrupt steep I saw something indescribable, which I
am now going to describe.
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