Roman art, and there were high banks on the summit which Lucian’s father had told him were the vallum of the camp, and a deep ditch had been dug to the north to sever it from the hillside.  On this summit oaks had grown, queer stunted-looking trees with twisted and contorted trunks, and writhing branches; and these now stood out black against the lighted sky.  And then the air changed once more; the flush increased, and a spot like blood appeared in the pond by the gate, and all the clouds were touched with fiery spots and dapples of flame; here and there it looked as if awful furnace doors were being opened.

The wind blew wildly, and it came up through the woods with a noise like a scream, and a great oak by the roadside ground its boughs together with a dismal grating jar.  As the red gained in the sky, the earth and all upon it glowed, even the grey winter fields and the bare hillsides crimsoned, the waterpools were cisterns of molten brass, and the very road glittered.  He was wonder-struck, almost aghast, before the scarlet magic of the afterglow.  The old Roman fort was invested with fire; flames from heaven were smitten about its walls, and above there was a dark floating cloud, like fume of smoke, and every haggard writhing tree showed as black as midnight against the black of the furnace.

When he got home he heard his mother’s voice calling:  “Here’s Lucian at last.  Mary, Master Lucian has come, you can get the tea ready.”  He told a long tale of his adventures, and felt somewhat mortified when his father seemed perfectly acquainted with the whole course of the lane, and knew the names of the wild woods through which he had passed in awe.

“You must have gone by the Darren, I suppose”—­that was all he said.  “Yes, I noticed the sunset; we shall have some stormy weather.  I don’t expect to see many in church tomorrow.”

There was buttered toast for tea “because it was holidays.”  The red curtains were drawn, and a bright fire was burning, and there was the old familiar furniture, a little shabby, but charming from association.  It was much pleasanter than the cold and squalid schoolroom; and much better to be reading Chambers’s Journal than learning Euclid; and better to talk to his father and mother than to be answering such remarks as:  “I say, Taylor, I’ve torn my trousers; how much to do you charge for mending?” “Lucy, dear, come quick and sew this button on my shirt.”

That night the storm woke him, and he groped with his hands amongst the bedclothes, and sat up, shuddering, not knowing where he was.  He had seen himself, in a dream, within the Roman fort, working some dark horror, and the furnace doors were opened and a blast of flame from heaven was smitten upon him.