me to a path which sloped a
little downwards to the edge of a delightful moorland country, all
brilliant with the hues of the mountain flowers. It was like a flowery
plateau high among the hills, in a region where are no frosts to check
the glow of the flowers, or scorch the grass. It spread far around in
hollows and ravines and softly swelling hills, with the rush over them of
a cheerful breeze full of mountain scents and sounds; and high above them
rose the mountain heights of the celestial world, veiled in those blue
breadths of distance which are heaven itself when man's fancy ascends to
them from the low world at their feet. All the little earth can do in
color and mists, and travelling shadows fleet as the breath, and the
sweet steadfast shining of the sun, was there, but with a ten-fold
splendor. They rose up into the sky, every peak and jagged rock all
touched with the light and the smile of God, and every little blossom on
the turf rejoicing in the warmth and freedom and peace. The heart of the
little Pilgrim swelled, and she cried out, 'There is nothing so glorious
as the everlasting hills. Though the valleys and the plains are sweet,
they are not like them. They say to us, lift up your heart!'

Her guide smiled, but he did not speak. His smile was full of joy, but
grave, like that of a man whose thoughts are bent on other things; and he
pointed where the road wound downwards by the feet of these triumphant
hills. She kept her eyes upon them as she moved along. Those heights rose
into the very sky, but bore upon them neither snow nor storm. Here and
there a whiteness like a film of air rounded out over a peak; and she
recognized that it was one of those angels who travel far and wide with
God's commissions, going to the other worlds that are in the firmament as
in a sea. The softness of these films of white was like the summer clouds
that she used to watch in the blue of the summer sky in the little world
which none of its children can cease to love; and she wondered now
whether it might not sometimes have been the same dear angels whose
flight she had watched unknowing, higher than thought could soar or
knowledge penetrate. Watching those floating heavenly messengers, and the
heights of the great miraculous mountains rising up into the sky, the
little Pilgrim ceased to think whither she was going, although she knew
from the feeling of the ground under her feet that she was descending,
still softly, but more qu