serve him as brothers and sisters, while at his feet nestled the homes of aliens who, for all their odd ways, were quite similar to Nova Scotians. Yet on this whole continent there was no creature who had heard of Paul Minas. Here he stood, like the son of a god on some sacred mount, watching Australians at their sports, philosophizing about them in a brand new pair of long trousers, infinitely well-disposed toward them, yet for all they knew of it he might just as well be on the top side of the world. If he were to go back the very next day, it would be to them as though he had never been here, yet for him the whole world would henceforth seem quite different than it would have seemed had he not been here. When the sun had sunk into the sea, he made his way down the hill and walked towards the centre of town along a residential street bordered by scorched gardens in which dusty red and yellow flowers struggled for existence. At the juncture of two deserted streets he came to the town hall, and as he was crossing the triangular space in front of it, his thoughts in a cloud, the bells began to chime.
At home there was the school bell, and every church had a single bell which on the Sabbath summoned the faithful monotonously to its doors, but until this evening Paul had never heard chimes. The four deep-voiced bells, solemnly intoning their formula of sixteen notes, enthralled him, and he stood spellbound as a still deeper voice tolled the hour. But the musical formula of the chimes did more than enthral him: it engendered a nameless mood compounded of wistfulness, yearning, loneliness, disillusionment, regret, confidence, and iridescent hope. The chimes were beautiful but infinitely sombre; they were a little weary, a little sad, resigned, but at the same time unflinching. Above all, they were wise. Their message was a proverb, a simple chord which yet expressed the essence of all truth. There was a hint of
