On, past rich woods, past trim cottages, gardens gay with flowers; past rhododendron shrubberies, broad fields of golden stubble, sweet clover, and grey swedes, with Ogwen making music far below.  The sun is up at last, and Colonel Pennant’s grim slate castle, towering above black woods, glitters metallic in its rays, like Chaucer’s house of fame.  He stops, to look back once.  Far up the vale, eight miles away, beneath a roof of cloud, the pass of Nant Francon gapes high in air between the great jaws of the Carnedd and the Glyder, its cliffs marked with the upright white line of the waterfall.  He is clear of the mountains; clear of that cursed place, and all its cursed thoughts!  On, past Llandegai and all its rose-clad cottages; past yellow quarrymen walking out to their work, who stare as they pass at his haggard face, drenched clothes, and streaming hair.  He does not see them.  One fixed thought is in his mind, and that is, the railway station at Bangor.

He is striding through Bangor streets now, beside the summer sea, from which fresh scents of shore-weed greet him.  He had rather smell the smoke and gas of the Strand.

The station is shut.  He looks at the bill outside.  There is no train for full two hours; and he throws himself, worn out with fatigue, upon the doorstep.

Now a new terror seizes him.  Has he money enough to reach London?  Has he his purse at all?  Too dreadful to find himself stopped short, on the very brink of deliverance!  A cold perspiration breaks from his forehead, as he feels in every pocket.  Yes, his purse is there:  but he turns sick as he opens it, and dare hardly look.  Hurrah!  Five pounds, six—­eight!  That will take him as far as Paris.  He can walk; beg the rest of the way, if need be.

What will he do now?  Wander over the town, and gaze vacantly at one little object and another about the house fronts.  One thing he will not look at; and that is the bright summer sea, all golden in the sun rays, flecked with gay white sails.  From all which is bright and calm, and cheerful, his soul shrinks as from an impertinence; he longs for the lurid gas-light of London, and the roar of the Strand, and the everlasting stream of faces among whom he may wander free, sure that no one will recognise him, the disgraced, the desperate.

The weary hours roll on.  Too tired to stand longer, he sits down on the shafts of a cart, and tries not to think.  It is not difficult.  Body and mind are alike worn out, and his brain seems filled with uniform dull mist.

A shop-door opens in front of him; a boy comes out.  He sees bottles inside, and shelves, the look of which he knows too well.

The bottle-boy, whistling, begins to take the shutters down.  How often, in Whitbury of old, had Elsley done the same!  Half amused, he watched the lad, and wondered how he spent his evenings, and what works he read, and whether he ever thought of writing poetry.