ndred feet,
and away and away and away, the golden-dimpled hills go changing from
the yellowish green of winter grass to the variously-toned grays of the
same grass in mid-distance, and then to a blue which grows continually
hazier until it melts at the sky-line, and seems half to blend with the
dim pallid sapphire of a December sky.

Here, 'with an ambrosial sense of over-weariness falling into sleep,'
would I often sit at the foot of the great crucifix, and would smoke
the pipe of idleness, a little unmindful, perhaps, of the good London
doctor's caution against the misuse of tobacco. It was here that I awoke
to the fact one day that the man with the axe was absent. He had slipped
away with no good-byes on either side, and I was blissfully alone again.
The sweet peace of it, and the quiet of it no tongue or pen can tell.
The air was balsamic with the odours of the pines which clothed the
hillsides for miles and miles and miles in squares and oblongs and a
hundred irregular forms of blackish green, sometimes snaking in a thin
dark line, sometimes topping a crest with a close-cropped hog-mane, and
sometimes clustering densely over a whole slope, but always throwing
the neighbouring yellows and greens and grays into a wonderful aerial
delicacy of contrast. The scarred lime trunks had a bluish gray tone in
the winter sunlight, and the carpet at their feet was of Indian red and
sienna and brown, of fiercest scarlet and gold and palest lemon colour,
of amber and russet and dead green. And everywhere, and in my tired mind
most of all, was peace.

I had been a fortnight at Janenne when my intrusive phantom left me
on Lorette. I had made no acquaintances, for I was but feeble at the
language, and did not care to encounter the trouble of talking in it.
The first friendship I made--I have since spent three years in the
delightful place, and have made several friendships there--was begun
within five minutes of that exquisite moment at which I awoke to the
fact that my phantom was away.

There was not a living creature in sight, and there was not a sound
to be heard except the distant tinkle of chisel and stone, and the
occasional rustle of a falling leaf, until Schwartz, the subject of this
history, walked pensively round a corner eighty yards down the avenue,
and paused to scratch one ear with a hind foot. He stood for a time with
a thoughtful air, looked up the avenue and down the avenue, and then
with slow deliberation, and