Nuth looked on for a while from the corner of the house with a mild
surprise on his face as he rubbed his chin, for the trick of the holes
in the trees was new to him; then he stole nimbly away through the
dreadful wood.
"And did they catch Nuth?" you ask me, gentle reader.
"Oh, no, my child" (for such a question is childish). "Nobody ever
catches Nuth."
HOW ONE CAME, AS WAS FORETOLD, TO THE CITY OF NEVER
The child that played about the terraces and gardens in sight of the
Surrey hills never knew that it was he that should come to the
Ultimate City, never knew that he should see the Under Pits, the
barbicans and the holy minarets of the mightiest city known. I think
of him now as a child with a little red watering-can going about the
gardens on a summer's day that lit the warm south country, his
imagination delighted with all tales of quite little adventures, and
all the while there was reserved for him that feat at which men
wonder.
Looking in other directions, away from the Surrey hills, through all
his infancy he saw that precipice that, wall above wall and mountain
above mountain, stands at the edge of the World, and in perpetual
twilight alone with the Moon and the Sun holds up the inconceivable
City of Never. To read its streets he was destined; prophecy knew it.
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