Silently and quickly.

Out to his own business.

What is he doing out there?

Death will cleanse the house.

The lonely man clutches his constricting collar as he guards the arrows which glide incessantly in his scoured brain.

What is that raging outside?

He said something about it, that fellow who has just been in, but he has been saying the same thing until it nauseates me.

What is that raging outside?

Death, comes the reply.

He recoils from hearing it.

It continues: You have set it in motion.

No, no!

But it says: You.

He clutches his collar.

The incessant glittering through his brain scours it continually deeper. They parade round – and he is doomed to watch over them. He groans under the burden.

Let me be freed of it!

No, it is too late.

Thus someone may sit, looking towards the centre, imagining what it must look like.

But they’re tunnelling underneath.

Sometimes the thought strikes through them like frost as they work: What is it, this thing that has appeared and taken on human shape? Where has it come from? Has it been here all the time? Can it ever be conquered completely?

They face towards it: Look there!

The centre rears up. Dark and hard. Inconceivable. As if it has been there for ever.

Yet they tunnel so that it shall fall.

6

A Glimpse inside the Stockade

Peter has an errand that takes him along many curious paths before he reaches his destination. He does reach it, but this is a Peter with shining arrows on his jacket and all the rest of the uniform. He has altered his quiet white features for the occasion too.

He is to contact a comrade who is shut in behind the great stockade in the compound in the centre of the house. His disguise enables him to slip past many watchmen’s eyes, heavy with guilt and shame, and at the most nerve-racking part he has one of his own people, who has taken the job of guard, so that it is possible to get a message to a prisoner.

Peter has reached this fellow. In front of him is the tall, dangerous stockade that even Peter is unable to climb.

‘Can you get this letter delivered before bedtime?’

‘Yes,’ answers the fake guard.

‘How are things in there otherwise?’

‘As usual.’

‘Could I look in this time?’

‘Yes. I’ll keep a look-out.’

He accompanies Peter to a chink that enables him to see a large open space with plain dormitory barracks scattered about, and in the background a tall dark wall with heavy prison windows. There is a spacious compound, and parts of the house have been torn down and taken away, to make room for an enormous enclosure. The dark building in the background belongs to the centre that one hears so many rumours about. The enclosure belongs to it too. Everything is collected in one spot.

Peter has stood at this chink before, but he feels he must stand here again and look at the place where so many comrades, known and unknown, live in varying degrees of suffering and loneliness. Who comes in is a matter of pure chance: here Peter is standing outside, and inside many are toiling who have not been a tenth as dangerous to the arrow-clad ones as he is.