MS-BRML-NWWR-2-38

[0599] deeper and deeper under the rains. [0600] No doubt I'll come back
some day, here, or to a similar slough, I can trust my feet
for that, as no doubt some day I'll meet again the sergeant and
his merry men. [0601] And if, too change^d to know it is they, I do
not say it is they, do not be deceived, it will be they, though
changed.

[0602] For to conjure up a b^eing, a place, I nearly said an
hour, but I would not hurt anyone's feelings, and then to use
them no more, that would be, how shall I say, I don't know. [0603] Not
to want to say, not to know what you want to say, not to be
able to say what you think you want to say, and never to stop
saying, or hardly ever, that is the thing to keep in mind, even
in the heat of composition.

[0604] That night was not like the other
night, if it had been I would have known. [0605] For when I try and think
of that night, on the canal^[#]bank, I find nothing, no night
properly speaking, nothing but Molloy in the ditch, and perfect
silence, and behind my closed lids the little night and its
little lights, faint at first, then flaming and extinguished,
now ravening, now fed, as fire by filth and martyrs.

[0606] I say
that night, but there was more than one perhaps. [0607] The lie,
the lie, to lying thought. [0608] But I find the morning, a morning,
and the sun al^ready high, and the little sleep I had then,
according to my custom, and space with its sounds again, and
the shepherd watching me sleep and under whose eyes I opened
my eyes.

[0609] Beside him a panting dog, watching me too, but less
closely than his master, for from time to time he stopped
watching me ^to gnaw at hⁱs flesh, furiously, where the ticks were
in him I suppose. [0610] Did he take me for a black sheep entangled
in the brambles and was he waiting an order from his master