here are
some, I say, who are like this,--who are not of the earth, earthy, nor
of the body, but of the spirit, whether good or bad, spiritual: angel or
demon, always.

Do you know one such? No? Perhaps not, for they are rare, very rare. But
some such there are, and if you do not know one, or one like to such a
one, I ask you if you do not think of him as I have said? Body! what is
body to such a man? what is a formation of clay deftly mingled in its
chemistry round about such an indomitable indwelling spirit? Does the
old rain-sodden nest photograph the bird, the swiftness and glory of
whose wings lived in it once? What is age to such a one? What has he to
do with the passing of years? Such a one is young and old both, from the
beginning of his career forever onward. He has the freshness of youth,
the strength of manhood, and the sagacity of age, fixed permanently in
his structure, as nature fixes her colors in the fibre of the ash and
the oak. Such have no age. How silly to ask how old he is. If you ask
me, I should answer, _Who can tell_? Their earthly parents say they were
born on such and such dates. Were they? Or had they lived as Mary's Son
had, ages before they took--for God's wise purpose--flesh? Who can tell?

"_Heresy_?" I'm not writing a sermon, I am writing a story, and I seek
to make my readers think. That would not be essential if I were
sermonizing. Good people don't want that kind of preaching.

But to return. Was he young? Was he old? Neither then nor ever after did
Herbert and the trapper think of him as having age; and yet he was with
them, and his body had all the marks which reveal to the noticing eye
the measure of man's days. This is the young man's description of him:

"Tall, straight, and well-formed; large in size, but shapely, hair brown
with gray in it; in all the face a look of great power, reserved, but
ready to act; eyes of changeable color, that took the shade of the
emotion that chanced to come and look out of them; when unoccupied,
cold, gray, and meaningless as a window-pane behind which no face is;
and over all the countenance the look of great gravity, divided by but
the slightest line from sadness."

So Herbert described him; but he always used to add: "Remember, this was
only his body, and _therefore no description at all_."

The girl? Why, certainly, you shall know of her, and from the same
authority:

"The girl that was with this strange man was not a girl merely, but bot