w for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep--"

"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think
of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.

"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and
blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the
heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained
with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of
the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened
through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence
intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail
overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in
the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire
flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw
down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of
sound.

"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into
the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees,
and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate
nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all
things--creatures, and men, and gods."

"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding
upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously
at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some
day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is
tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall
go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think and think, but I
have not yet thought of a way."

"If," said the man, "thou could'st love as royally as thou could'st
hate, what a lover thou would'st become! For me, I love but lightly, and
hate not at all, yet have I been a man for aeons. How near art thou to
manhood?"

"I have lived nearly twelve years."

Like a flash the man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward
towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter
yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his
face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice
trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I
have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy,
at the line of hills