s it. Now he was alone with God,
and he had put all the old, mean, hateful life away from him. It did
not even so much as peep into his mind that he would have to endure
many hardships of body, rain, and chilly winds, a bed of rock, and
fare both hard and scanty. This was not what had troubled him in the
old days. What had vexed his heart had been unclean words and deeds,
greediness, hardness, cruel taunts, the lack of love, and the meanness
and baseness of the petty life. All that was behind him now; he felt
free and strong, and while he moved about to spy out his new kingdom,
he sang loudly to himself a song of praise. The place pleased him
mightily; over his head ran up the cliff with its stony precipices and
dizzy ledges. The lower rocks all fringed with weeds, like sea-beasts
with rough hair, stood out black from the deep blue water that lay
round the rocks. He loved to hear the heavy plunge of the great waves
around his bastions, the thin cries of the sea-birds that sailed about
the precipice, or that lit on their airy perches. Everywhere was a
brisk sharp scent of the sea, and the fresh breeze, most unlike the
close sour smell of the little houses. He felt himself free and strong
and clean, and he thought of all the things he would say to God in the
pleasant solitude, and how he would hear the low and far-off voice of
the Father speaking gently with his soul.

His first care was to find the cave that was to shelter him. He spent
the day in climbing very carefully and lightly all over the face of
the rock. Never had he known his hand so strong, or his head so sure.
He sate for a time on a little ledge, to which he had climbed on the
crag face, and he feasted his eyes upon the sight of the great cliffs
of the mainland that ran opposite him, to left and right, in a wide
half-circle. His eyes dwelt with pleasure upon the high sloping
shoulders of rock, on which the sun now shone very peacefully, the
strip of moorland at the top, the brushwood growing in the sloping
coves, the clean shingle at the base of the rocks, and the blue sky
over all. That was the world as God had made it, and as He intended it
to be; it was only men who made it evil, huddling together in their
small and filthy dens, so intent on their little ugly lives, their
food and drink and wicked ways.

Presently he found the cave-mouth, and noted in his mind the best way
thither. The cave seemed to him a very sweet place; the mouth was all
fringed wit