Well, at least it was something to face the disquietudes of his own life in the presence of masonry like this, so subdued, so encrusted, rendered so mellow by the passing of the generations! As long as Fate allowed him to eke out his days amid old time-weathered concretions, like this King’s Barton Tower, he could never touch certain abysses of misery! Here in these West Country places he was at any rate spared the atrocity of feeling the pinch of life’s dilemmas against a background of monstrous modern inventions. The long, cold clutch of scientific discovery, laid, like metallic fingers, upon the human pulse, could not despoil the dignity of existence here; though the invasion by such inhuman forces had already begun!

“Long may this tower stand, so that men like me can touch its stones, its buttresses, its lichen, its moss, and escape from the dragon’s-tail of the stinging present!”

He was conscious of a stealthy step behind him, and, turning round, he found Jason Otter at his side.