he faces of these were
turned downward to the stones whereon they lay, but the man in the ship
had perished with his eyes fixed on the heavens. The oars and sails
and ropes were all dry and crumbling, and the raiment of the men had
mouldered away.

In the length of that narrow pass between the lofty cliff-walls the
Sea-farers found no vestige of grass or weed, either on the cliff-sides
or on the stones and shingle. Neither was there any water, save where
in the hollows of some of the boulders rain had lodged and had not yet
been drunk up by the sun. No living creature, great or small, lived in
that ghyll.

Within the round of the sea-walls the island lay flat and low, and it
was one bleak waste of boulder and shingle, lifeless and waterless save
for the rain in the pitted surfaces of the stones; but in the midst of
the waste there stood, dead and leafless, a vast gaunt tree, which at
one time must have been a goodly show. When the Sea-farers reached it,
they found lying on the dead turf about its roots the white bones of
yet four other men.

Much they questioned and conjectured whence these ill-starred wanderers
had come to lay their bones on so uncharitable a soil, and whether they
had perished in seeking, like themselves, for the Earthly Paradise.
"What," sighed one, "if this were the Earthly Paradise, and yon the
Tree of Life!" But the others murmured and would not have it so.

Yet to the sick man even this Isle of the Stones of Emptiness was a
place of rest and respite from the sea,--"It is still mother-earth," he
said, "though the mother be grown very old and there be no flesh left
on her bones"--and at first it seemed as though he was recovering in
the motionless stillness and in the great shadow of the cliffs.
Something of this Serapion said to the little chorister, but the lad
answered: "Nay, father, do you not see how the man that used to look
out of his eyes has become a very little child--and of such is the
kingdom of heaven?"

"Explain, little brother," said Serapion.

"Why," said the lad, "is it not thus with men when they grow so old or
sick that they be like to die--does one not see that the real selves
within them look out of window with faces grown younger and smaller and
more joyous, till it may be that what was once a strong man, wise and
great, is but a babbling babe which can scarce walk at all?"

"Who told thee these things?" asked Serapion.

"No one has told me," replied the lad, "b