an echo seemed to live in the air, as if a real
voice had spoken. His heart thrilled and his breast ached with a great
longing. He subdued himself, sitting with bowed head and closed eyes,
his chin sunk upon his folded hands. There was a bitter pain in his
throat.

'No,' he said half aloud, as if he had need to form his thoughts in
words; 'it is all at an end, dear old dad It was well for you that you
died with that good hope in your mind It shed a ray of peace on your
heart in the last dark hour. It would be well for me if I could think
that you were here.. I could stand the pain of it I could bear, I think,
to turn my whole life's stream back upon itself if that would bring you
peace. I could bear to repent if my repentance could avail But you are
gone into the great dark. You will be sad no more and glad no more. I
broke your heart, and you tried to patch it with that futile hope. And
you were not the man to ask me to be a coward, and a liar to my own
soul. I will keep what little rag of manliness I have.'

The inward voice seemed to say 'Wait.'

'It would be easy to go mad,' he said, rising wearily. '"They rest from
their labours, and their works do follow them."'

He had wandered a mile or two from his tent, along the track, and now
turned his footsteps home again. The afternoon light was mellowing. A
great range of hills, with a line of cloud shining across the breast of
it like a baldric of silver, lifted parcel-coloured masses of white and
violet into a rolling billowy glory of cloud which half obscured and
half relieved them. The sky above was of an infinite purity. He stood
and looked, until his heart yearned.

The yearning spoke itself in words which had been familiar since
childhood:

'"Oh that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at
rest!"'

'Old earth,' he said, 'why is it? You seem to long for me. You seem to
stretch out hands to me, as if you would say, "Sleep here!" We belong
to one another, I suppose. This flesh and bone, this breathing, thinking
apparatus, grew out of the slime of you, old world, and will go back to
your dust and flourish in grass and flower, and float in cloud and fall
in rain. You have hidden in your green breast all the millions who have
gone before me. Fecund mother! kind grave! And you, too, for all so
green and kisty as you look, you are dying. Your life is longer than
mine, but you are no Immortal. Your hills roll down to your valleys.
Every strea