e
scent came up and the song came down all the time he was writing to his
mother--a long letter. When he had closed and addressed it, he fell
into a reverie. Apparently he was to have his meals by himself: he was
glad of it: he would be able to read all the time! But how was he to
find the schoolroom! Some one would surely fetch him! They would
remember he did not know his way about the place! It wanted yet an
hour to dinner-time when, finding himself drowsy, he threw himself on
his bed, where presently he fell fast asleep.

The night descended, and when he came to himself, its silences were
deep around him. It was not dark: there was no moon, but the twilight
was clear. He could read the face of his watch: it was twelve o'clock!
No one had missed him! He was very hungry! But he had been hungrier
before and survived it! In his wallet were still some remnants of
oat-cake! He took it in his hand, and stepping out on the bartizan,
crept with careful steps round to the watch-tower. There he seated
himself in the stone chair, and ate his dry morsels in the starry
presences. Sleep had refreshed him, and he was wide awake, yet there
was on him the sense of a strange existence. Never before had he so
known himself! Often had he passed the night in the open air, but
never before had his night-consciousness been such! Never had he felt
the same way alone. He was parted from the whole earth, like the
ship-boy on the giddy mast! Nothing was below but a dimness; the earth
and all that was in it was massed into a vague shadow. It was as if he
had died and gone where existence was independent of solidity and
sense. Above him was domed the vast of the starry heavens; he could
neither flee from it nor ascend to it! For a moment he felt it the
symbol of life, yet an unattainable hopeless thing. He hung suspended
between heaven and earth, an outcast of both, a denizen of neither!
The true life seemed ever to retreat, never to await his grasp.
Nothing but the beholding of the face of the Son of Man could set him
at rest as to its reality; nothing less than the assurance from his own
mouth could satisfy him that all was true, all well: life was a thing
so essentially divine, that he could not know it in itself till his own
essence was pure! But alas, how dream-like was the old story! Was God
indeed to be reached by the prayers, affected by the needs of men? How
was he to feel sure of it? Once more, as often heretofor