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“But what is it?”

“Well,”–Sir John seemed to hesitate–“you might call it a scene. Yes, that’s it–a scene. There’s a piece of water and a church beside it–just an ordinary-looking little parish church, with a tower but no pinnacles. Outside the porch there’s a tallish stone cross–you can just see it between the elms from the churchyard gate; and going through the gate you step over a sort of grid–half a dozen granite stones laid parallel, with spaces between.”

“Then it must be a Cornish church. You never see that contrivance outside the Duchy: though it’s worth copying. It keeps out sheep and cattle, while even a child can step across it easily.”

“But, my dear sir, I never saw Cornwall–and certainly never saw or heard of this contrivance–until I came and settled here, eight years ago: whereas I’ve been dreaming this, off and on, ever since I was fifteen.”

“And you never actually saw the rest of the scene? the church itself, for instance?”

“Neither stick nor stone of it: I’ll take my oath. Mind you, it isn’t like a church made up of different scraps of memory. It’s just that particular church, and I know it by heart, down to a scaffold-hole, partly hidden with grass, close under the lowest string-course of the tower, facing the gate.”

“And inside?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never been inside. But stop a moment–you haven’t heard the half of it yet! There’s a road comes downhill to the shore, between the churchyard wall–there’s a heap of greyish silvery-looking stuff, by the way, growing on the coping–something like lavender, with yellow blossoms–Where was I? Oh yes, and on the other side of the road there’s a tall hedge with elms above it. It breaks off where the road takes a bend around and in front of the churchyard gate, with a yard or two of turf on the side towards the water, and from the turf a clean drop of three feet, or a little less, on to the foreshore. The foreshore is all grey stones, round and flat, the sort you’d choose to play what’s called ducks-and-drakes. It goes curving along, and the road with it, until the beach ends with a spit of rock, and over the rock a kind of cottage (only bigger, but thatched and whitewashed just like a cottage) with a garden, and in the garden a laburnum in flower, leaning slantwise,” –Sir John raised his open hand and bent his forefinger to indicate the angle–“and behind the cottage a reddish cliff with a few clumps of furze overhanging it, and the turf on it stretching up to a larch plantation . . . .”

Sir John paused and rubbed his forehead meditatively.

“At least,” he resumed, “I think it’s a larch plantation; but the scene gets confused above a certain height. It’s the foreshore, and the church and the cottage that I always see clearest. Yes, and I forgot to tell you–I’m a poor hand at description–that there’s a splash of whitewash on the spit of rock, and an iron ring fixed there, for warping-in a vessel, maybe: and sometimes there’s a boat, out on the water. . . .”

“You describe it vividly enough,” said Mr. Molesworth as Sir John paused and, apparently on the point of resuming his story, checked himself, tossed his cigar out of the window, and chose a fresh one from his pocket-case. “Well, and what happens in your dream?”

Sir John struck a match, puffed his fresh cigar alight, deliberately examined the ignited end, and flung the match away. “Nothing happens. I told you it was just a scene, didn’t I?”

“You said that somehow the dream was an unpleasant one.”

“So I did. So it is. It makes me damnably uncomfortable every time I dream it; though for the life of me I can’t tell you why.”