been
fortunate in securing. He drew off a wrapper, and held out to Gilbert
a little figure of a Muse, finely sculptured, with an inscription on
the pedestal. Gilbert stepped to the window to look at it, and as he
did so it flashed across his mind that this was surely the scene that
he had observed in the black stone. He stood for a moment with the
statue in his hand, with such a strange look in his face, that the
new-comer thought for an instant that his gift must have aroused some
sad association. But Gilbert recovered himself in a moment and
resolutely put the thought out of his mind, praised the statue, and
thereupon entered into easy talk.

The great scholar spent some days at Cambridge, and Gilbert was much
with him. They talked of learned matters together, but the great
scholar said afterwards that though Gilbert was a man of high genius
and of great insight into learning, yet he felt in talking with him as
though he had some further and deeper preoccupation of thought.

Indeed when Gilbert, by laying of dates together, became aware that it
was three years to a day since he had seen the vision in the stone, he
was often haunted by the thought of his visit to the Hill. But this
lasted only a few days; and he took comfort at the thought that he had
seen a further vision in the stone which seemed at least to promise
him three more peaceful years of unchanged work, before he need give
way to the heaviness that the third vision had caused him. Yet it lay
like a dark background in his thoughts.

He kept very much to his work after this event, and became graver and
sterner in face, so that his friends thought that his application to
study was harmful. But when they spoke of it to Gilbert, he used to
say laughingly that nothing but work made life worthy, and that he was
making haste; and indeed the great book grew so fast that he was
within sight of the end. He had many wrestles within himself, about
this time, as to the goodness and providence of God. He argued to
himself that he had been led very tenderly beside the waters of
comfort, that he had served God as faithfully as he could--and indeed
he had little to reproach himself with, though he began to blame
himself for living a life that pleased him, and for not going about
more in the world helping weak brethren along the way, as the Lord
Christ had done. Yet again he said to himself that the great doctors
and fathers of the Church had deemed it praiseworthy that