RETURN OF EXILES
119
one-eyed man went on in that tearful voice, and all of a sudden they all looked at me. I do not know who the two old men were or what any of them were doing, but there are moments when it is clearly time to go, and I left them there and then. And just as I got up on to my bicycle I heard the plaintive voice of the one with the hammer apologizing for the liberty he had taken in coming back to Stonehenge.
"But after all these years," I heard him crying, "After all these years. . . ."
And the one with the spear said: "Yes, after three thousand years. . . ."
