At that he moved heavily and slowly in way-worn carpet slippers, panting as he went, to the back part of his shop, and I went with him.  This was a dingy lumber-room full of idols:  the near end was dingy and dark but at the far end was a blue caerulean glow in which stars seemed to be shining and the heads of the idols glowed.  “This,” said the fat old man in carpet slippers, “is the heaven of the gods who sleep.”  I asked him what gods slept and he mentioned names that I had never heard as well as names that I knew.  “All those,” he said, “that are not worshipped now are asleep.”

“Then does Time not kill the gods?” I said to him and he answered, “No.  But for three or four thousand years a god is worshipped and for three or four he sleeps.  Only Time is wakeful always.”

“But they that teach us of new gods”—­I said to him, “are they not new?”

“They hear the old ones stirring in their sleep being about to wake, because the dawn is breaking and the priests crow.  These are the happy prophets:  unhappy are they that hear some old god speak while he sleeps still being deep in slumber, and prophesy and prophesy and no dawn comes, they are those that men stone saying, ’Prophesy where this stone shall hit you, and this.’”

“Then shall Time never slay the gods,” I said.  And he answered, “They shall die by the bedside of the last man.  Then Time shall go mad in his solitude and shall not know his hours from his centuries of years and they shall clamour round him crying for recognition and he shall lay his stricken hands on their heads and stare at them blindly and say, ‘My children, I do not know you one from another,’ and at these words of Time empty worlds shall reel.”

And for some while then I was silent, for my imagination went out into those far years and looked back at me and mocked me because I was the creature of a day.

Suddenly I was aware by the old man’s heavy breathing that he had gone to sleep.  It was not an ordinary shop:  I feared lest one of his gods should wake and call for him:  I feared many things, it was so dark, and one or two of those idols were something more than grotesque.  I shook the old man hard by one of his arms.

“Tell me the way to the cottages,” I said, “on the edge of the fields we know.”

“I don’t think we can do that,” he said.

“Then supply me,” I said, “with the goods.”

That brought him to his senses.  He said, “You go out by the back door and turn to the right”; and he opened a little, old, dark door in the wall through which I went, and he wheezed and shut the door.  The back of the shop was of incredible age.  I saw in antique characters upon a mouldering board, “Licensed to sell weasels and jade earrings.”  The sun was setting now and shone on little golden spires that gleamed along the roof which had long ago been thatched and with a wonderful straw.  I saw that the whole of Go-by Street had the same