Читать книгу The Complete Works of Algernon Blackwood. Novels, Short Stories, Horror Classics, Occult & Supernatural Tales, Plays онлайн

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'There's the clock still striking,' Nixie cried. 'It's only been a few seconds altogether.'

He heard the church clock strike the last six strokes of midnight.

For some minutes he realised little more than that he felt rather stiff and uncomfortable in his bedroom chair, and that he was chilly about the legs. Outside the wind still roared and whistled, making the windows rattle, while gusts of rain fell volleying against the panes as though trying to get in. A roll of distant thunder came faintly to his ear. He stretched himself and began to undress by the light of a single candle. On the table lay a sheet of paper headed 'How I climbed the Scaffolding of the Night,' and he read down the page and then took his pen and wrote the heading of something else on another sheet: 'Adventure in the Land between Yesterday and To-morrow.' With a mighty yawn he then blew out his candle and tumbled into bed.

And with him, for all the howling of the elements, came a strange sense of peace and happiness. Out of the depths rose gradually before his inner eye in a series of delightful pictures the scenes he had just left, and he understood that the pathway to that country of dreams fulfilled and emotions that never die, lay buried far within his own being.