ur memories of a burden. To drag into light the skeleton of
old days, and by the light thus thrown upon it to see that it is only a
skeleton, that, once beheld, should be buried and its old bones
forgotten. You are too much of a man, Felt, to waste away in these
wilds. Come! forget I am a stranger, and relieve yourself and me by
opening these tablets you speak of, even if it does cost you a pang of
the old sorrow. The talk we have had has already made a flutter in the
long-closed leaves, and should I leave you this minute you could not
smother the thoughts and memories to which our conversation has given
rise. Then why not think to purpose and--"

He raised one hand and stopped me. The gesture was full of fire, and so
was the eye he now turned away from me to gaze up at the overhanging
steeps above, with their great gorges and magnificent play of light and
shadow; at the valley beneath, with its broad belt of shining water
winding in and out through fertile banks and growing towns, and finally
at the blue dome of the sky, across which great clouds went sailing in
shapes so varied and of size so majestic that it was like a vision of
floating palaces on a sea of translucent azure.

Gasping in a strange mood between delight and despair, he flung up his
arms.

"Ah! I have loved these hills. Of all the longings and affections that
one by one have perished from my heart, the solitary passion for nature
has alone remained, unlessened and undisturbed. I love these trees with
their countless boughs; these rocks, with their hidden pitfalls and
sudden precipices. The sky that bends above me here is bluer than any
other sky; and when it frowns and gathers its storms together, and hurls
them above these ledges and upon my uncovered head, I throw up my arms
as I do now and exult in the tumult, and become a part of it, till the
hunger in my soul is appeased, and the blood in my veins runs mildly
again. And now I must quit all this. I must give to men thoughts that
have been closely wedded to Nature. I must tear her image from my heart,
and in her pure place substitute interests in a life I thought forever
sacrificed to her worship. It is a bitter task, but I will perform it.
There are other calls than those which reverberate from yon peaks. I
have just heard one, and my feet go down once more into the valleys."

His arms fell with the last words, and his eyes returned again to my
face.

"Come into the cave," said he. "I cannot te