Two half dollars and a quarter jingled in his pocket. His suit was seedy and his beard unshaven. A picture of New York ran through his mind: he stood far off from it gazing at the splendour of its towers in the morning light; he came closer and the noise of it smote his ears; suddenly he plunged into the city, his perspective vanished, and there rose about him the ugly, unrelated, inchoate masses of tawdriness that had been glorious from a distance, while people—dour, malicious, selfish people who scuttled like ants—supplanted the vista of stone and steel. The trite truth of the ratio between approach and enchantment amused him. It was so obvious, yet so few mortals had the fine sense to withdraw themselves. He was very happy walking tirelessly along that road.

After his luncheon he allowed a truck to carry him farther from the city, deeper into the magic of spring. The driver bubbled with it—he wore a purple tulip in his greasy cap and he slowed down on the hilltops with an unassuming reverence and a naïve slang that fitted well with Hugo’s mood. When he reached his destination, Hugo walked on with reluctance. Shadows of the higher places moved into the lowlands. He crossed a brook and leaned over its middle on the bridge rail, fascinated by an underwater landscape, complete, full of colour, less than a foot high. From every side came the strident music of frogs. Spring, spring, spring, they sang, rolling their liquid gutturals and stopping abruptly when he came too near.

In the evening, far from the city, he turned from the pavement on a muddy country road, walking on until he reached the skeleton of an old house. There he lay down, taking his supper from his pocket and eating it slowly. The floor of the second story had fallen down and he could see the stars through a hole in the roof. In such houses, he thought, the first chapters of American history had been lived. When it was entirely dark, a whippoorwill began to make its sweet and mournful music. Warmth and chilliness came together from the ground. He slept.

In the morning he followed the road into the hills. Long stretches of woodland were interrupted by fields. He passed farmhouses and the paved drive of an estate. More than a mile from the deserted farm, more than two miles from the main road, half hidden in a skirt of venerable trees, he saw an old, green house behind which was a row of barns. It was a big house; tile medallions had been set in its foundations by an architect whose tombstone must now be aslant and illegible. It was built on a variety of planes and angles; gables cropped at random from its mossy roof. Grass grew in the broad yard under the trees, and in the grass were crocuses, yellow and red and blue, like wind-strewn confetti.