ons, no clamour of wheel and
heartless voices, to blind the soul, to pervert its pure desires, to
deaden its fears, to deafen its ears to the sweeter calls--to shut it
in, to shrivel it: to sicken it in every part. Rock and waste of sea and
the high sweep of the sky--winds and rain and sunlight and flying
clouds--great hills, mysterious distances, flaming sunsets, the still,
vast darkness of night! These are the mighty works of the Lord, and of
none other--unspoiled and unobscured. In them He proclaims Himself. They
who have not known before that the heavens and the earth are the
handiwork of God, here discover it: and perceive the Presence and the
Power, and are ashamed and overawed. Thus our land works its marvel in
the sensitive soul. I have sometimes thought that in the waste is
sounded the great keynote of life--with which true hearts ever seek to
vibrate in tune.

XIII

A SMILING FACE

"Doctor Luke, zur," I said, as we walked that day, "I dreamed o' you,
last night."

"Pleasantly, I hope?"

I sighed.

"What," said he, gravely, "did you dream of me?"

'Twas hard to frame a reply. "I been thinkin', since," I faltered,
floundering in search of a simile, "that you're like a--like a----"

"Like what?" he demanded.

I did not know. My eye sought everywhere, but found no happy suggestion.
Then, through an opening in the hills, I caught sight of the melancholy
wreck on the Reef of the Thirty Black Devils.

"I fear t' tell," said I.

He stopped. "But I wish to know," he persisted. "You'll tell me, Davy,
will you not? It means so much."

"Like a wrecked ship," said I.

"Good God!" he exclaimed, starting from me.

At once he sent me home; nor would he have me walk with him that
afternoon, because, as he said, my sister would not allow me to bear him
company, did she know as much as I had in some strange way divined.

* * * * *

Next day, armed with my sister's express permission, I overcame his
scruples; and off we went to Red Indian Cave. Everywhere, indeed, we
went together, while the wrecked folk waited the mail-boat to
come--Doctor Luke and I--hand in hand--happy (for the agony of my loss
came most in the night, when I lay wakeful and alone in my little bed)
as the long, blue days. We roamed the hills, climbed the cliffs,
clambered along shore; and once, to my unbounded astonishment and alarm,
he stripped to the skin and went head first into the sea from the ba