and that though they had tired of London they still held to their
land; for the words that the man had said were, "Av er kike," and then
I knew that that very language that was carried to distant lands by
the old, triumphant cockney was spoken still in his birthplace and
that neither his politics nor his enemies had destroyed him after all
these thousand years. I had always disliked the Cockney dialect--and
with the arrogance of the Irishman who hears from rich and poor the
English of the splendour of Elizabeth; and yet when I heard those
words my eyes felt sore as with impending tears--it should be
remembered how far away I was. I think I was silent for a little
while. Suddenly I saw that the man who kept the shop was asleep.
That habit was strangely like the ways of a man who if he were then
alive would be (if I could judge from the time-worn look of the lion)
over a thousand years old. But then how old was I? It is perfectly
clear that Time moves over the Lands of Dream swifter or slower than
over the fields we know. For the dead, and the long dead, live again
in our dreams; and a dreamer passes through the events of days in a
single moment of the Town-Hall's clock. Yet logic did not aid me and
my mind was puzzled. While the old man slept--and strangely like in
face he was to the old man who had shown me first the little, old
backdoor--I went to the far end of his wattled shop. There was a door
of a sort on leather hinges. I pushed it open and there I was again
under the notice-board at the back of the shop, at least the back of
Go-by Street had not changed. Fantastic and remote though this grass
street was with its purple flowers and the golden spires, and the
world ending at its opposite pavement, yet I breathed more happily to
see something again that I had seen before. I thought I had lost
forever the world I knew, and now that I was at the back of Go-by
Street again I felt the loss less than when I was standing where
familiar things ought to be; and I turned my mind to what was left me