k
and take another path. It seems as if irresistible forces drive it
along the path of grief and bitterness, and yet all the while a longing
to meet with friendship and responsive love grows stronger and warmer
within it.

Landolin felt something of this emotion, although he probably could not
have given it utterance. But in the soul there is much that is
unutterable, even for a far more thoughtful and meditative nature than
Landolin's.

The man who was formerly strong as iron, had become unnerved, and one
could conceive of nothing which could happen to renew his strength.
Perhaps Thoma's love could have accomplished it. Perhaps! Certainly, he
said to himself. There were even times when he not only mourned that
this love was denied him, but was yet more deeply grieved to see his
child, his proud, beautiful child, bent with sorrow, and her life left
waste and bleak. He had nurtured a pride and severity in her, which now
threatened her destruction. In his distress he groaned aloud, and
submitted to Peter's dominion as if to a penance; indeed, though
Peter's boldness was so serious an offense, it often extorted his
admiration.

"He will some day be the man to trample the whole world under foot, and
laugh as he does it. He will be more powerful than Titus himself."

Landolin resolved to dissemble and play the hypocrite; to act as if he
mistook people's malice for good will, and to retaliate secretly. But
his pride was incompatible with success in hypocrisy. He was annoyed at
his own lack of courage, he very candidly called it cowardice, but
still that did not help him to regain the old fearlessness--the old
pride. Yes, he had become over-sensitive.

His walk had now brought him to the forest, with its overhanging
branches. In other times how little he had cared for the noxious
insects of the woods. He had not grown up with gloved hands, but now he
shuddered at the caterpillars that hung in the air by their slender
threads, as though they were waiting to drop down upon him. These
caterpillars can be shaken off, but the world's malicious thoughts,
that like caterpillars hang everywhere by invisible threads, cannot.

Landolin was sitting on an old tree-stump, when the game-keeper
approached, and addressed him in a friendly manner, expressing his
sorrow that Landolin had had to undergo so much trouble. Landolin
complained that in the short time, he had grown twenty years older, and
suffered with a constant palpitation o