through the
darkness.

CHAPTER XXXV.

"Be the day weary or never so long,
At length it ringeth to even song."

There is little to chronicle in the events of the next few years.
Livingstone resided almost entirely at Kerton. He rode as hard, and
distinguished himself in all other field-sports as much as ever. But
even in these, his favorite pursuits, he had lost the intense faculty of
enjoyment which once seemed a part of his powerful organization.

Do you remember that scene in the Nekuia, where the Eidolon of Achilles
comes slowly through the twilight to meet his old brother in arms? Not
only are his form and features altered after so ghastly a fashion that
even the wanderer, wave-worn and travel-stained, looks brilliant by
comparison, but all his feelings are utterly and strangely changed.
Listen! He asks after the father from whom he parted when quite a child;
after the son, whom he never saw; but not one word of his fair
first-love--not one of her who was the passion of his manhood, whom he
bucklered once against ten thousand. He had rather hear of Peleus and
Neoptolemus than of Deidamia or Briseis. Of Polyxena, be sure that he
remembers nothing but that he was holding her hand when her brother slew
him. Will he ever forgive her that? Not if she could have made amends by
the sacrifice of ten lives instead of that one which she gave,
willingly, on Sigaeum. Has ambition any hold on him either? Only to
breathe the fresh clear air above instead of that murky, heavy
atmosphere, he would resign the empire of the dead, and be a drudge to
the veriest boor. Yet once, if we remember right, he chafed fiercely
enough at a word of authority uttered by the King of Men. One of his old
tastes clings to him still--a very simple one. He has forgotten the
savor of Sciote and Chian wine; but--were it only for the sake of the
carouses they have had together--Odysseus will not grudge him another
draught out of the black trench. It is so long since be tasted blood!

Guy was no more like his former self than the shadow was like the
substance of Pelides. He was not languid, but simply apathetic and
indifferent, so that one could not help being constantly struck by the
contrast between his moral and physical state: the latter was still the
perfection of muscular power.

He was every thing that was kind to his mother, and to Isabel Forrester
too, who spent much of her time at Kerton, and whose health was very
delica