y, to himself. The meaning that
the lake held out to him always eluded him, and never more completely
than now, at the end of an almost windless spring evening.

It came into view a moment sooner than he thought for, and in an
altogether different aspect--bluer than ever seen by him in memory or
reality--and, he confessed to himself, more beautiful. Like a great harp
it lay below him, and his eyes followed the coast-lines widening out in
an indenture of the hills: on one side desert, on the other richly
cultivated ascents, with villages and one great city, Tiberias--its
domes, cupolas, towers and the high cliffs abutting the lake between
Tiberias and Magdala bathed in a purple glow as the sun went down. My
own village! he said, and it was a pleasure to him to imagine his father
sipping sherbet on his balcony, in good humour, no doubt, the weather
being so favourable to fish-taking. Now which are Peter's boats among
these? he asked himself, his eyes returning to the fishing fleet. And
which are John's and James's boats? He could tell that all the nets were
down by the reefed sails crossed over, for the boats were before the
wind. A long pull back it will be to Capernaum, he was thinking, a
matter of thirteen or fourteen miles, for the leading boat is not more
than a mile from the mouth of the Jordan. Then, raising his eyes from
the fishing-boats, he followed the coast-lines again, seeking the shapes
of the wooded hills, rising in gently cadenced ascents.

A more limpid evening never breathed upon a lake! he said; and when he
raised his eyes a second time they rested on the ravines of Hermon far
away in the north, still full of the winter's snow; and--being a
Galilean--he knew they would keep their snow for another month at least.
The eagerness of the spring would then be well out of the air; and I
shall be thinking, he continued, of returning to Jerusalem and
concerning myself once more with Pilate's business. But what a beautiful
evening! still and pure as a crystal.

A bird floated past, his black eyes always watchful. The bird turned
away to join his mates, and Joseph bade his escort watch the flock: a
bird here and a bird there swooping and missing and getting no doubt
sometimes a fish that had ventured too near the surface--that one
leaving his mates, flying high towards Magdala, to be there, he said, in
a few minutes, by my father's house; and in another hour thou shalt be
in thy stable, thy muzzle in the corn, h