If any man came to me, and said, "You are going to tell your tale, good sir, without knowing how to handle it," I should look at him first with some surprise, and anger at his interference, yet in a very few minutes, unless he wanted to argue about it, probably he would have my confession, and a prayer for his assistance. For every one knows how to do a thing, much better than the one who does it.

In spite of all that, I will declare in a truthful manner unabashed, whatever I know concerning the strange affairs which have befallen me; and perhaps if you care to look into them, you will admit that even now, when the world supposes itself to be in a state of proud civilization, there are things to be found near its centre of perfection which are not quite up to the standard of the Lord.

Towards the middle of the month of May, in a year which I never shall forget, I happened to be riding home from Guildford in the county of Surrey, after a long but vain attempt to do a little business for my father. For we were not, as we used to be, people of wealth and large estates, and such as the world looks up to; but sadly reduced, and crippled, and hard-pushed to make a living. And the burden of this task had fallen most heavily upon me, because I was the only son at home, and my father's mind was much too large to be cramped with petty troubles. So that when he had been deprived of nine-tenths of his property, and could not procure any tenants for the rest, it became my duty to work the best of the land that still remained, and make both ends meet, if possible.

To a young man this was no great hardship unless he were spoiled for country life by ambition, or sloth, or luxury; and it seemed to me at first a welcome change, to be recalled from Oxford and from Lincoln's Inn, and set to watch the earth and sky, instead of ink and paper. And although there were storms and swamps of loss and disaster, to cross continually, I was always at the point of getting on, if only there came just a little turn of luck. But that which seemed to baffle mainly my most choice endeavours, was that when I had done good work, and made good staple—as it seemed to me—never a man to whom I showed it (at the most reasonable figure) would stop to look at it for a moment in a reasonable spirit; because, whatever I had to offer was, by strange coincidence, the very thing my fellow-creatures happened not to want just then.

What had I done, this very day, but carried into Guildford market, more than twelve miles from our home, samples of as fair, and fat, and thoroughly solid grain, as ever was grown to be ground in England? And what had the dealers said to me? "Tut, tut! what call you that? Not so bad for an amateur. Try again, sir, try again. Sir Harold must grow it cheaper." And they made me not a single offer, such as I could think of twice; while the farmers looked askance, and smiled very kindly and respectfully, yet as if I had no business there, and must soon discover my sad mistake.

"Never mind what they think," I exclaimed to myself, "or how they laugh at all I can do. Wait a bit, wait a bit, my friends. We are not come to the bottom of the basket yet. Hold up, ancient Joseph."

Ancient Joseph was the only horse now remaining with us, who could get along at all, without a plough or waggon at his heels or tail. Like us, he had seen better days; and like us he did not dwell upon them. Faithful, generous, and conscientious, he kept up to his own standard still, and insisted upon his twelve miles an hour, whenever his head was homeward. It was in that pleasant direction now; and much as I longed for a gentle glide of the soft May breeze around me, and a leisurely gaze at the love of the year, now telling its tale in the valleys, that old fellow (sniffing his oats leagues away) cared for nothing but a quick stroke towards them. Much as I wanted to think about the money that I ought to have got, but couldn't, this horse between my legs was so full of what he meant to be filled with, that I was compelled to attend to his mood, instead of giving rein to my own; lest haply a ditch should be our conclusion.

Without any heed we scoured past the loveliest views in England, as people in a train are forced to do; till Old Joe's wind became a gale, more adverse now than favourable. His four legs, which had been going like two, began to go like a figure of four, and he gave me to understand through the flaps of leather, that his heart was repentant of having its own way. On the ridge of the hills at the four cross-roads, I allowed him therefore a welcome rest, having the worst of the road before us, and the shadows growing deeper.

Perhaps I had prided myself too much upon seldom indulging in whims and freaks, as my elder brother Harold did, to his great disadvantage and our own; and now at the age of twenty-five, I should have known better than to begin. But some strange impulse (which changed the whole course of my life from that hour) seized me, as I stopped to breathe my horse opposite that old direction-post.

"To Cobham and Esher" was on the left arm; the forward one pointed to a village near our home, and that was the road I had always taken. But the arm that would have pointed to the right, if it had been in its duty, was not there now, though a double mortice-hole gave token of its late existence. And the lane towards the right, of which it should have told us, seemed rather desirous of evading notice, and certainly had received very little for years from any road-surveyor. Narrow, and overhung, and sinking into sleepy shadows with a fringe of old roots and dead bracken, it afforded a pleasant sense of passing into quietude and loneliness.

Time was more plentiful than money with me, and why should I hurry to tell my father the old tale of failure, so often repeated, but none the more welcome—as an old joke is—by reason of familiarity? I knew the chief outlines of the country pretty well, because an old fox had been fond of it, whom we never brought to book, when the hounds were kept at Crogate Park. How he had beaten us we never knew, beyond having fifty opinions about it, of which only two were in favour with the wise ones—the first that he sank into the bowels of the earth, and the other that he vanished into the clouds of heaven. And the place was lonely enough for him to have taken whichever course he chose, leaving nothing but negative evidence.

Knowing that if I could cross that valley I should probably strike into a bridle-lane which would take me home at leisure, I turned my old horse, much against his liking, into this dark and downhill course, away from the main road, which according to the wisdom of our forefathers followed the backbone of the ridge. Soon we began to descend steep places broken with slippery falls of rock, while branches of thicket and sapling trees shook hands overhead, and shut out the sky. My horse, who had never been down on his knees, and knew perhaps by instinct the result of that attitude in the eyes of men, was beginning to tremble exceedingly; and in fairness to him and myself as well, I jumped off and led him. He looked at me gratefully, and followed without fear, though sometimes sliding with all four feet, and throwing back his head for balance. And perhaps he observed, as soon as I did, that no horse had ever tried that descent, since the rains of winter washed it.

When I was ready to think myself a fool, and wish both of us well out of it, the sweetest and clearest note, that ever turned the air into melody and the dull world into poetry, came through the arching bowers of spring, and made the crisp leaves tremulous. Then as a bud, with its point released, breaks into a fountain of flower, the silvery overture broke into a myriad petals of sensitive song.

"What a stunning nightingale," said I, as a matter-of-fact young Briton might, with never an inkling of idea that the bird meant anything to me. But he seemed to be one of those that love mankind (as the genial robin-redbreast does), or at any rate desire to be thought of kindly, and to finish well what is well begun; for he flitted before me down the hill, and enlivened the gloom with vicissitudes of love.

Listening to this little fellow, and trying to catch sight of him, I was standing with Old Joe's nose in my hand—for he was always friendly—when the music that should lead my life, in the purest strain came through the air. It was not the voice of a bird this time, but a sound that made my heart beat fast and then held me in rapture of wonder.

Dew of the morning in a moss-rose bud, crystal drops beading a frond of fern, lustre of a fountain in full moonlight—none of these seem to me fit to compare with the limpid beauty of that voice. And more than the sweetest sounds can do, that indite of things beyond us, and fall from a sphere where no man dwells, this voice came home to my heart, and filled it with a vivid sorrow and a vague delight.

Sturdy as I was, and robust, and hardy, and apt to laugh at all sentimental stuff, the force of the time overcame me, as if I had never been educated; and as soon as I rather felt than knew that I was listening to some simple hymn, I became almost as a little child inhaling his first ideas of God. The words that fell upon my ears so softly were as unknown as the tune itself, voice and verse and air combining into a harmony of heaven.

Ought any man to be called a snob, for doing a thing that is below himself, on the impulse of the moment, and without a halt of thought? It is not for me to argue that; but I hope that fair ladies will forgive me, when I confess that I stepped very gently, avoiding every dry twig and stone, across the brown hollow that is generally found at the foot of any steep fall of wood. By this time the lane was gone to grass, and I slipped Old Joe's bit that he might have a graze, while I went in quest of my Siren.

On the further brink of the spongy trough, a dark frizzle of alder and close brushwood was overhanging a bright swift stream, which I recognised as the Pebblebourne, a copious brook, beloved of trout, and as yet little harassed by anglers. Through this dark screen I peered, and beheld a vision that amazed me. Along a fair meadow that bent towards the west, and offered a slim tree here and there—like a walking-stick for evening—the gentle light of day's departure came quite horizontally. There was, as there often is in nature, some deep peace of sadness, which rebukes mankind for its petty cares, and perpetual fuss about itself. And yet there was something in front of all this, to set the heart of a young man fluttering.

On the opposite bank, and within fair distance for the eyes to make out everything, was a niche of dark wall shagged with ivy, and still supporting the grey stonework of a ruined chapel-window, between whose jagged mullions flowed the silvery light of the west and fell upon the face of a kneeling maiden. The profile, as perfect as that of a statue, yet with the tender curves of youth, more like the softness of a cameo, was outlined as in a frame of light against the black curtain of the ivied wall. Beside the kneeling figure lay a head-tire of some strange design, removed perhaps when the hymn was followed by the attitude of prayer.

The beauty and rapture of this devotion made me hold my breath, and feel as if I were profaning it. "Get away, you low intruder," said my better self to me. But it is all very well to talk. It was out of my power to go away. Under this spell I stood, until that gentle worshipper arose with a bend of her graceful neck, and gathered her pale grey robe around her. It was not such a dress as English ladies according to the fashion of the moment wear, with pumpkin sleeves, or with wens upon their shoulders, and puckers, and gathers, and frizzles and scollops, in a mangle of angles and zig-zags. What it was made of is more than I can say; I only know that it was beautiful; drawn in at the waist with a narrow belt, and following rather than trying to lead the harmony of the living form. But one thing caught my attention even so, and that was the flash of a bright red cross on the delicate curve of the bosom.

It appeared to me that tears were sparkling under the fringe of large dark eyes, as the lonely maiden glanced around, while preparing for departure. Then to my surprise—if anything could surprise me further—with a rapid movement she laid bare a gleaming shoulder, and set upon it the tip of a long straight finger. Her face was partly obscured to me by the bend of her arm, but I fancied that she smiled, and was opening her lips to pronounce some words, when suddenly that horse Old Joe, who had been doing his best to lessen the burden of his maintenance, gave vent to a snort of approbation, not of the fair sight across the water—for that was hidden by bushes from him—but at the juiciness of his graze. My guilty conscience made me start, for I fully expected to be found out in a thing I had never done before; and I felt ashamed to look again, till I knew there was no suspicion. Then a breath of wind turned up a leaf; and who could help glancing under it?

I saw that the beautiful and mysterious damsel had taken some little alarm at the grunt of the greedy quadruped. From the foot of the old chapel-window she was taking something white like a crucifix—though I could not be certain about that; meanwhile she had placed on her head that strange affair which I had seen lying on the ground. To me it looked like an octagonal hat, with a long veil of gauze descending from it, resembling nothing that I had ever seen on a lady's head, to the best of my remembrance; although in bright fact they wear such strange things, and trim them anew so wondrously, that no man must be positive. Whatever it was, it looked very sweet—as the ladies themselves express it—but I grieved that I could see her face no more.

She placed that white object very carefully in the folds of her dress beneath the veil which covered her down to the waist; and then to my great disappointment she was gone, seeming rather to float on the air than to walk with a definite stride, as our ladies make their way. But the quivering points of some pendulous leafage showed that a bodily form had passed there.

I was left in a conflict of wonder, and doubt, and intense desire to know more, mingled with some self-reproach—though the worst of that came afterwards—and a hollow feeling in my heart as if I should never fill it with myself again. Something told me that the proper course, and the most manly and business-like, was to jump on my horse and make him climb the hill anew, and take the high road, and get home at full speed, and never say a word about what I had seen, nor even think about it, if it could be helped.

But I assure you (and I hope again that allowance will be made for me, as a young man not much accustomed to the world, and hitherto heedless of feminine charms) that I found it impossible to do the right thing now. Instead of a lofty and resolute withdrawal, in I went for more of that, of which I had taken too much already. I stuck Old Joe's bit into the hungry leather of his most voracious mouth, and came down on his back with a ponderous swing, and girded him with a hard grip of his belly, to show me some more of what he had scared away. Much against his liking—for if ever a horse was totally destitute of romance, here he was and no mistake—with a grunt of remonstrance he plodded into the pebbly ford at the bottom of the hill.

But when we struck into the silence of the meadow, what was I the wiser? Lo, the dusk was settling down in the most indifferent manner, the sunset flush was fading into a faint and chill neutrality, the trees had no shadow, and, worst of all, no sign or even memory of any sweet passage among them. Only on the left hand some hundred yards away was a black door set in an old grey wall, which curved along leisurely as far as I could see, and offered no other entrance.

"I am not the sort of fellow to put up with this," I exclaimed to myself impatiently; and yet there was no way to help it just now. And if it came to reason, what business had I there? Still the whole of this land had been ours not more than a century ago, and a true Briton feels that he has his rights, however long he may have lost them. But it is not in his nature to lose sight of reason, though I am not quite so certain how that was with me, as I wandered home slowly along forgotten ways, and knew that my life was changed thenceforth.