"What do you know of peace, and why should you desire it?" asked the father, with a certain cold contempt in his tone. "You have not yet lived; and you have certainly not laboured. Rest is for those who have laboured and grown weary. In that rest that you desire you would have an empty mind for showman, and of its meagre entertainment you would tire as speedily as a child. Live first, and watch the puppets of memory play afterwards. The fields of amaranth will wait for you however long you live."

But the young man insisted: "I want to find them now. And when I have found them I will come for you, mother, dear; and we will return to them together and be happy and at peace."

But the mother's eyes were troubled with an inexplicable expression. "It were better that you should wait till I come to you," she answered gently. "As come to you I surely shall—one day. But come not to fetch me ... if once you find the fields."

"I surely shall come for you," cried the youth.

"No, no!" implored the mother.

But he smiled on her, and was gone.

It was a long journey, and a toilsome one, and the end of it the youth could neither learn of nor anticipate.

The fields of amaranth? Yes: all had heard of them. But no one knew any one who had ever found them. And, for themselves, they were content to know these waited for them somewhere. They had ties—they had businesses—they were content to live and wait.

"When I return from them, shall I give you tidings of them?" asked the young man, earnestly.

"No, no!" They were vehement in their dissuasions that he should not: finally even fleeing from him in terror at the thought.

And the young man mused perplexedly as he walked on. "Are there really fields of amaranth for those who can find them?" he asked of a wrinkled, white-haired wayfarer. "Or is it merely a bait, a delusion, and a lie?"

"Yes, surely, my son, these fields await us all: else life, at best, were a sorry game for most of us. It is there we shall rest and reap our reward."

"But no one seems eager to set out for them and discover them."

"No one?" quoth the old man, looking at him strangely: "there are many ways of getting there: you have chosen only one. There are other roads, and crowded ones: though you know nothing of them yet."

The young man brushed past him hot with disdain. He was merely an old dotard: empty-minded like the rest.

The lures of the highway were many and formidable; but the young man turned aside from them impatiently. "I am bound for the fields of amaranth," cried he haughtily: "when I return I will taste these good things you offer."

"Will he ever return?" whispered a girl to her mother.

She had looked with eyes of love on the daring young wayfarer; and a vague regret shivered through her as he passed on.

"God only knows. But I doubt it," said the mother.

The girl hid her face in her apron and wept.

But the young man had not overheard the whisper, and with head held high he pushed on along the road.

And here were the fields of amaranth at last! He could see them smiling faintly on the other side of the valley. But they had a strangely vague and unsubstantial look. One might almost have fancied he were looking at a mirage.

And between the young wayfarer and the fields of amaranth the rugged hillside sloped abruptly: its foot being shrouded in a dense white mist. He could hear a river murmuring sullenly somewhere in the depths, but the mist hid the waters and he could only hear their moan.

How far he had left the busy highway behind him! He would like to take just one farewell glance at it. The fields beyond him seemed to waver deceptively in his eyes. One glance at the highway, with its booths and its faces, and his vigour, strangely waning, would surely be renewed.

But as he turned and saw the dear familiar highway, along which he had trudged so many weary miles, his heart went out in a yearning towards it, and he stretched out his arms to it, hungering for its life.

So mighty was the fascination it now exercised over him, that he began to rush headlong down the hill towards it, eager to be once more mingling in its throng, and to once more feel its hum in his ears.

At the foot of the hill he met the fair young girl whose eyes had erstwhile followed him so wistfully, and he flung himself into her arms sobbing violently.

"The life here—you—I cannot part with them!" he cried passionately. And he shuddered: "If the wish had come too late!"