|The Columns of Timgad|
So the road went on, and I with it till I came to the thirty-second stone, and recognised its number by holding a match close by. Then I knew that I had covered twenty miles and was close to Timgad. A branch road opened out on the right, and there was a sign-post pointing along it. I followed the new road across a careful girder bridge such as might cross a brook in Normandy. I saw a light up on the rise of the foot-hills, and beyond it, suddenly and yet dimly, a very mob of columns. They stood up against the vague glimmer of the sky of every size and in thousands, as though they were marching. A little rift in the clouds let in the moon upon them palely. Her light was soon extinguished, but in that moment I had seen a large city, unroofed and dead, in the middle of this wasted land.
|The Old Soldier|
However men may act who see a vision but see it in extreme fatigue, so did I. I suffered the violent impression of that ghost, but my curiosity was no longer of the body. I took no step to see the wonder which this gleam had hinted at, but I turned and struck at the door of the house which was now quite near me, and which was still lit within. An old man, small, bent, and full of energy, opened the door to me. He was that soldier of whom they had told me at Lambèse.
“I was expecting you,” he said.
I remembered that the driver had promised to warn him, and I was grateful.
“I have prepared you a meal,” he went on. Then, after a little hesitation, “It is mutton: it is neither hot nor cold.”
A man who has been on guard as often as had this old sergeant need not mind awakening in the small hours, and a man who has marched twenty miles and more in the dark must eat what he is given, though it be sheep and tepid. So I sat down. He brought me their very rough African wine and a loaf, and sat down opposite me, looking at me fixedly under the candle. Then he said:
“To-morrow you will see Timgad, which is the most wonderful town in the world.”
“Certainly not to-night,” I answered; to which he said, “No!”