MS-WU-MSS008-3-48

[0125] himself onward, or as a defence, when the time came, against dogs
and marauders. [0126] Yes, night was gathering, but the man was innocent,
greatly innocent, he had nothing to fear, though he went in fear,
he had nothing to fear, there was nothing they could do to him, or
very little. [0127] But he can't have known it. [0128] I wouldn't know it myself,
if I thought about it.

[0129] Yes, he saw himself threatened, his body
threatened, his reason threatened, and perhaps he was, perhaps they
were, in spite of his innocence. [0130] What business has innocence here?
[0131] What relation to the innumerable spirits of darkness? [0132] It's not
clear. [0133] It seemed to me he wore a cocked hat. [0134] I remember being
struck by it, as I wouldn't have been for example by a cap or by
a bowler.

[0135] I watched him recede, overtaken by his anxiety, at least
by an anxiety which was not necessarily his, but of which as it
were he partook. [0136] Who knows if it wasn't my own anxiety overtaking
him. [0137] He hadn't seen me. [0138] I was perched higher than the road's
highest point and flattened what is more against a rock the same
colour as myself, that is grey. [0139] The rock he probably saw.

[0140] He
gazed around i^as if to engrave the landmarks on his memory, and must
have seen the rock in the shadow of which I crouched like Belacqua,
or Sordello, I forget. [0141] But a man, a fortiori myself, isn't exactly
a landmark, because.

[0142] I mean if by some strange chance he were to
pass that way again, after a long lapse of time, vanquished, or to
look for some forgotten thing, or to destroy something, his eyes
would search out the rock, not the haphazard in its shadow of that
unstable fugitive thing, still living flesh. [0143] No, he certainly
didn't see me, for the reasons I've given and then because he was
in no humour for that, that evening, no humour for the living, but