ad of
one mind.

And then, too, the wonder which one felt seemed to lead nowhere. It
did not even lead one to ascertain sure principles of conduct and life.
The utmost prudence, the most careful attempt to follow the guidance of
those natural laws, was liable to be rendered fruitless by what was
called an accident. One's instinct to retain life, to grasp at
happiness, was so strong; and yet, again and again, one was taught that
it was all on sufferance, and that one must count on nothing. One was
set, it seemed, in a vast labyrinth; one must go forward, whether one
would or no, among trackless paths, overhung by innumerable perils.
The only thing that seemed sure to Hugh was that the more one allowed
the awe, the bewilderment, to penetrate one's heart and mind, the more
that one indulged a fearful curiosity as to the end and purpose of it
all, the nearer one came, if not to learning the lesson, yet at least
towards reaching a state of preparedness that might fit one to receive
the further confidence of God. Such tranquillity as one gained by
putting aside the problems which encompassed one, must be a hollow and
vain tranquillity. One might indeed never learn the secret; it might
be the will of God simply to confront one with the desperate problem;
but a deep instinct in Hugh's heart told him that this could not be so;
and he determined that he, at all events, would go about the world as a
patient learner, grasping at any hint that was offered him, whether it
came by the waving of grasses on the waste, by the droop of
flower-laden boughs over a wall, from the strange horned insect that
crawled in the dust of the highway, or from the soft gaze of loving
eyes, flashing a message into the depths of his soul.

The pure faint lines of the wold that he saw from his window on the far
horizon, rising so peacefully above the level pasture-land, with the
hedgerow elms--what did they stand for? The mind reeled at the
thought. They were nothing but a gigantic cemetery. Every inch of
that soft chalk had been made up by the life and death, through
millions of years, of tiny insects, swimming, dying, mouldering in the
depths of some shapeless sea. Surely such a thought had a message for
his soul, not less real than the simpler and more direct message of
peace that the soft pale outlines, the gentle foldings of the hills,
seemed to lend his troubled spirit; in such a moment his faith rose
strong; he trod a shining track throu