"Dear Sir,—
"The wooden enemies are out.
"Yours obediently,
"Oliver Vorse."

Simon Searell read this short message as he tramped the streets of Stonehouse, which were full of fog, from the sea on one side and the river on the other. Vorse was an uneducated man; the mysticism of flowers was nothing to him, the time of spring was merely a change of season, and the most spiritual of blooms were only "wooden enemies." Searell frowned a little, not at the lack of education, which was rather a peace to be desired, but at the harshness of the words, and went on, wondering if the wood-anemones were to be his friends, or little cups of poison.

He climbed streets of poor houses, their unhappy windows curtained with mist, and came out near a small church made of iron, a cheap and gaudy thing, almost as squalid on the outside as the houses. The backslider looked at it with a shudder. It was his no longer; he had given it up; he was forgetting those toy-like altars, the cheap brass candlesticks, the artificial flowers, and all the images. They were wooden and stone enemies to him now. He was going deeper to find the throbbing heart of religion, putting aside dolls and tapers and the sham of sentimentality. Solitude and mysticism were to be his stars through the night, and he trusted, with their aid, to reach the dawn. He turned from the church, stopped at a house, and that was squalid too, knocked, then wiped his boots, as if certain of being admitted.

"Father Damon?" he asked shortly. Searell's voice was sweet; he had helped people "home," as they called it, with his tongue, not with his soul, just as a sweet-toned organ calls for tears with the beauty of its sounds, though the instrument itself is dead.

"Yes, your reverence," the housekeeper answered, as shortly; and Searell walked up the foggy stairs murmuring to himself, "The wind-flowers are out, and I am free."

Father Damon stood in a little square room hideously papered. He was small, dark, heavy-featured, peasant-like; and Searell saw at a glance that his successor was as dull in many ways as Oliver Vorse. All that he knew had been forced upon him almost violently; he had not gone forth gathering for himself, he dared not, his mind had been tilled by careful teachers, kept under restraint, all his side-growths pruned away, in order that orthodoxy might develop in one large unlovely head. When the order went forth to kneel, he knelt, and when it was time to lift his eyes to Heaven, he lifted them. It was a life of prison, and he could never smell the woodland through the fog of incense.

"He knows nothing," muttered Searell. "He thinks it is daylight where he stands."

"I come to give you information about the mission," he said aloud, and then began; but the telling took some time. How troublesome, how paltry, the details; and Father Damon was so dull. Everything had to be repeated, explained so carefully; and was it worth the words? The successor was very earnest, but not enthusiastic, that had been crushed out of him; and Searell grew impatient at the wooden figure, with its simple face and child-like questions. He spoke faster, almost angrily, desiring to get away and smell the earth; and his eyes wandered about the room, which was so unlovely, not bare, but filled with those things that make for the nakedness of life. There was wanting something to galvanise that sluggish Damon into passion, to destroy the machinery, turn him into a strong animal with dilating nostrils. One little touch would have done it. A portrait of a pretty woman upon the mantelshelf would have gone far; but there was nothing except pictures of mythical saints.

"You are retiring. You seem strong and well," said Damon, when he had obtained all the information that was required.

Searell was in a hurry to be gone, as the sleeper struggles to awake from a bad dream; but that voice and its stagnant repose aroused him.

"I am old, I am sixty," he said. "I am beginning again, trying to find what the Church has not shown me."

"What is that?"

"Light."

Damon stared with the eyes of horror, and put out his peasant-like hands as if to force away some weight that pressed against him; but he said nothing.

"I will not depart in the odour of hypocrisy. Listen," said Searell. "I am far from saying that the Church does not lead towards a kind of light; but it has not led me. And this do I say, that in the world at large all religion is a failure; and I am going to find mine in the solitudes."

"The truth is in the Church. It is your fault if you have missed it," said Damon, in a hollow voice, hoping that the other, for the sake of his soul, was mad.

"It is there for some, the minority. You will never realize how small that minority is. We cannot hasten the dawn with juggling. True religion is a thing of innocence, not a matter of spells and charms; and it is in the innocence of Nature that I will search for it. I believe it exists there, underneath the outward cruelty, and I shall find it among the flowers. The flower alone does not struggle with violence, it sheds no blood; the weed smothers, and the bindweed chokes; but without some fault upon the surface, perfection might be obtained, which cannot be. Look into the flower, and you will find a condition which is not approached by man or other animals. There is a purity which brings tears into your eyes. Eliminate violence, and you have innocence; obtain innocence, and you see the light. At the beginning of things we are told that the world was destroyed by water because the earth was filled with violence. At the beginning of the new era we learn that the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence. Will you say the Church does not rule by violence, by threats, suppressions, rubrics, and by vows?"

"I cannot understand you," said Damon.

"Will you understand when I say that the God of life is to be found among the flowers?"

The other shook his head and looked frightened. Free speech was not allowed, and, if it had been, he would not have known how to use it. He walked between rubrics, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left; and the living lily was a thing for funeral wreaths. For the altars, artificial flowers were good enough, as they did not require renewing, and they looked real to the congregation, and how they were regarded elsewhere did not concern him; and whether they had been made by sweated labour did not concern him, because he was not allowed to think, and he himself was artificial, neither man nor animal, but a side-growth of supernaturalism.

"Let me go on now I have begun," said Searell. "I am leaving here, and my words will not live after me. I am a man who has tested life, who has been through every experience, and I have discovered that what morality calls bad is often good, and that which we call virtue sometimes springs from vice. The purest water runs upon mud, only you must not rake it up. In my youth I served as a soldier, and upon leaving the army I sought the Church, partly to find a rest, chiefly, perhaps, because my mind was mystical. But nothing was revealed, and nothing could be, for the mystic must be free; and the priest is a soul in prison, and the book of his captivity is always before him. Here he must join his hands; there he must lift his eyes to Heaven, prostrate himself, kiss the altar, until the time comes when he feels alone, cut off from the Creator of his dreams by these mechanics, horribly alone among images; and he seems to hear a voice asking sorrowfully, 'What is this rule you are following? Who told you to do this? Go out upon the hills and into the woods, for I am there.' But he cannot move, for the time has come to join his hands again, and the revelation passes unseen, because he has to keep his eyes shut. It is written so, and he must obey."

"I cannot answer you," muttered Damon; and it was true, for these words took him outside the well-worn groove and dropped him useless.

"If I found the man who could, I would follow him," came the answer, and the white-headed priest passed a hand across his eyes, as if trying to brush the fog away. "I have been longing to escape for years. The iron of the little mission-church has eaten into my soul. I ought to have resigned? Why so, when I performed all my duties? Without means I could not have faced the world, for the mystic is not a practical man, and these hands," he said, frowning, "they are hands to be despised, for they have done nothing. No, do not answer me, you cannot, you are bound. I am free. A year ago I was left money—"

"A curse."

"If you will, a curse to buy a pathway to my Heaven. There was a place I pined for, up on the heights of Dartmoor, a valley among mountains. I have bought it. They call it Pixyland."

"Paganism," cried the peasant-priest hoarsely, and crossed himself.

"Purity," said Searell, in his sweet voice. "Pure air, pure hills, pure loneliness. It is a place of rocks, of heather and large-rooted ferns, and it is very steep, terrace rising upon terrace to the heights. At the bottom of the valley are trees; here also is a wild path and a wild stream broken upon the rocks, and becoming whole again at the foot of a glen. For centuries the place has been haunted in men's imagination, and they have avoided it because it is a garden of—angels. I am going now to make it bloom, I am going to grasp that solitude and weave with it a mantle of light. I am going to walk on my pixy-path and watch the shadows creeping up and down my pixy-glen; and the growth will come, the growth of knowledge, and of consciousness; and there I may meet my Gardener, driven out of the world by violence, out of the Church by violence, revealing Himself, not tortured, cross-laden, and frowning, and not awful, but as the smiling Guardian of the flowers."

There was hardly a sound in the cold room, stiff with the antique pictures of quaint saints, dark with that dull peasant born to be ruled; and yet Searell was going out with a haunted face, passing like a phantom from the house of poverty, and the wet board with Mass notices, and the waste of ground heaped up with rubbish. There was a pear-tree leaning from the waste, a tree which the builders had forgotten, and from the tree hung a broken branch, and at the end of that branch, beneath the buds of spring, were two black leaves neglected by the winter, side by side, struggling with one another; for there was wind down the street which made them struggle; but neither dropped, and they fought on silently while the wind lasted.

"Violence even in dead things," Searell murmured; and, reaching up his hand, he quieted those two restless leaves for ever.

II

Oliver Vorse was lying among the wood-anemones, and he was drunk. He would have looked like a monster had his condition been rare; but it was common, therefore Vorse was not abnormal, only a fool. He did not know where he was, in the pixy-path upon the wind-flowers, crushing so many with his sodden carcase, while the pure pixy-water trickled underneath. He had come the wrong way at the turning of the path; instead of ascending to the house, which was the way of difficulty, he had stepped downwards choosing the path of ease, as men will, even when sober. The state of his body was nothing, as nobody would see him except Sibley, his wife. The master was expected tomorrow, and then he would have to pretend to be a man.

The moon was young, a cradle of silver, and the stars were wrapped in sleep-compelling clouds; and all the light that there was seemed to come from the anemones which Vorse was defiling. The little white things were lanterns, retaining light, but not giving it forth, and a stickle of water shone like a shield. There was such a wonderful purity in Nature apart from the man. Everything seemed to bear the mark of beauty and holiness except him. It was out of the world in that fairy garden hanging between the cities and the clouds, and the vices of the world were out of place; and yet there was no barrier which they could not leap across.

A light appeared thick and heavy, putting out the eyes of the flowers. It wobbled down the natural terraces, weather-hewn from granite, and with it came a voice suggesting more violence, harsh and angry, not a voice of the clouds, but of the street-corner, where faces are thin and fierce, and the paving-stones seem cruel. Sibley was searching for her husband, not because she loved him, nor requiring his company for any reason except the selfish one that the loneliness above frightened her, and her small spirit quailed before the heaving moorland. Any sort of a brute was better than the God of the mountains. She stumbled over an obstacle, lowered the lantern, but it was a mass of granite carved cynically by centuries of rain into the semblance of a tombstone. Again she stumbled, and now it was the trunk of a tree, phosphorescent with rottenness. A third time she stumbled, and so found her master with the rottenness of the fallen tree, without the strength of the granite.

She kicked him, struck him with the greasy lantern, and swore.

"Get up, dirty swine. Get up, will ye? Mind what the master told yew? and he'm coming in the morning."

Oliver only growled and snored. This was his form of mysticism, and it was a kind of happiness. If master had dreams, why not he? Master could dream at one end of creation, he at the other. There was plenty of time. Sibley was only twenty-four, Oliver not much older. When life is young the end of it is a myth, and passion is the god.

There was another light down the pixy-path, very steady and soft. Had it been blue it might have been a thing of the bog, looking for the body it had thrown away, but it was white, and it flickered hardly at all, for the night was smothered up and the winds were slumbering. It came up the path with a kind of gliding rather terrible and there was not a sound around it. The master was approaching in the night. Having completed the last duty sooner than he had anticipated, he acted on the impulse. There was time to escape, so why wait for the morning? And there would be the glamour of passing through the dark towards clouds and mistland. The preparations of a man in earnest take no time. He must put a taper in his pocket, the last relic of the church he was leaving, as the night would be heavy upon the pathway, and he must walk there and see the wood-anemones in flower and feel the peace settling upon his eyelids. There was no time to be lost, for he was old, and still a child, with everything to learn.

Sibley saw the figure, and screamed, supposing it to be a spirit doing penance for past sins with the lighted candle; while her husband heaved and called for drink.

Searell stood upon the path. The wind-flowers were out, but their heads were hanging in shame; there was no spiritual life in them, they were already dead like the two black leaves upon the pear tree, and the destroyed of life was that heap of flesh upon them. He had come away from the world to forget its violence, and here it was upon his mystic pathway. He had come to find his God upon the flowers, and had found a drunken man instead.

He was calm, to Sibley he looked divine, as he placed the candle in the niche of a gaping boulder, and she wondered at his restraint. He was a god, for he had made her, had saved her from street life, and might still save Oliver if he could bear with him. They were not of his religion, they were only devil-worshippers, and yet he had stooped down and dragged them almost by violence from the rubbish-pit.

"Forgive 'en this once, master," she cried. "I'll see he don't fall again. Us didn't look vor ye till the morning, and Oliver went down, and this be how he comed back."

There was a flat rock above the pixy-water, and here Searell seated himself, saying, "Do not speak. Your voice is harsh."

For some moments the only sounds were the deep breathing of Vorse and the tinkling of the stream. The flame of the candle did not flicker, and Sibley remained as motionless, her hands clasped before her, looking down. Then Searell spoke:

"I walked along a street, and at a dark end of it a man and woman were fighting. They were young and fierce. As I came near, the man threw the woman down and thumped her in the back, I separated them by violence. They respected my profession, and did not greatly resent my interference. So there was good in them, but, like young beasts, they had run wild, and no man had tamed them. You know of whom I am speaking?"

"Yes, master, I reckon," she whispered.

"At that time they were living together, although unmarried. I told them I should be requiring a couple to attend to me and my home, and I promised to engage them if they would be legally wedded. But conditions were imposed. One of them has been broken tonight."

"It won't ever happen again, master."

"I have myself to think of. There must be selfishness," said Searell. "There is no escaping from it. If one condition is broken, another may be. You remember the other?"

"Yes, master—no children."

The words sounded harsh, in that fairy place, and they seemed to agree rather with the breathing of the drunken man than with the ringing of the stream.

"Perhaps I am hard, but I have my peace of mind to consider. A child's cry, a child's mischievous ways, would destroy it. There is no room in my house for children, and this is not the place for them. I have a search to make," he murmured. "The scream of infants would lead me far astray. You will remember?"

"Us ha' no other home, master."

"You will remember?"

"Yes, master."

"I will forget what has happened tonight," said Searell, bending from the rock, dipping his hand into the pixy-water. "Let this be a time of regeneration for us all. Do you respect a ceremony?"

"Yes, master, I reckon," she said again, though she could not understand him.

"We will lead a new life," he said, with a smile which was visible in the light of candle and lantern.

Sibley stepped forward as Oliver lifted himself with heavy movements, and muttered a half-conscious "Ask your pardon, master."

Searell brought up a little of the bright water, and sprinkled the woman, then the man, without any other sign, and with the words in his soft mystic voice, "I receive you into the new life."

Then he picked up the taper and went, leaving the man and woman afraid of him.

III

After a year in Pixyland, what was there? A garden, a place of almost unearthly beauty, and through it the master moved slowly, clad no longer in the clothes of religion, nor even in the garments of respectability; his coat sack-like, its pockets bulging with bulbs and tubers, and his hair was in white ringlets, and his hands were often in the warm earth, grubbing out furze-roots. The terrestrial paradise had been attained; down the steep slopes poured a cascade of colour, the pixy-path was alight all night with white, out of the pixy-water rose golden osmundas and the ghostly spirÆa; and Searell's face was also ghostly, it was hungry, and the eyes were dull. It was not the face of the priest who had built up the mission, for that had been eager. It was not the face of the mystic who had walked up the path by candlelight, for that had been happy. It was not the face of the spiritualist who feels he is conquering the atmosphere, nor that of a dreamer. It was the face of one who was sad.

Searell had discovered, though he would not own it to himself, that lonely happiness is impossible. What was a discovery if no friend could be told of it? What was the loveliness of his garden when there was no one to share it with? What would Heaven itself be if he was there alone? There must be sympathy, and without it life is lost.

Intellect was losing its edge. He almost forgot what he had come there for. Instead of ascending towards more light he was falling into grosser darkness. He did not even dream; he was sluggish, and oblivion was over him; which must happen when a man cuts himself free from the hearts and brains of others. His cry was no longer the triumphant one of strength and self-confidence. It was the cry "Why hast Thou forgotten me?" as he walked heavily, and the weight of his own presence oppressed him; and then he would mutter aloud, "Come and see my garden. I must show you the flowers," though there was nobody to hear. That was all: he was a gardener; he wanted to show his flowers, shrubs, ferns, he wanted to delight some one with his bogplants, he longed to see admiration dawning upon a human face, love for the beautiful kindling in human eyes; and so he came to crave for human life, human words and beauty, human sympathy, even human sin and shame and violence rather than the innocence and purity and gentleness of God among the flowers.

"Master, where be I to plant this?" "Master, will ye pay these bills?" Such were the almost brutal questions around him.

He had asked for solitude; and now he longed for passion, earthly love.

It was winter, when the nights were wild and the evenings intolerable; and during one of them the sound of a quarrel reached his ears. Oliver and Sibley had not been satisfactory. If they had abstained from the vices, they had not learnt to love one another; and, as Searell listened then, he saw the violent streets and that boy and girl tussle in the dirt. He went down, and at the foot of the stairs heard the woman's angry voice, "Yew ha' ruined me"; and then the growl of Oliver, "Shut your noise. Master be moving over." Through the doorway Searell saw them, like beasts half-tamed, longing to break into their natural habits, but dreading the master's whip. Were they worse than they had been? Was it the effect of solitude upon them? Sibley had no small amusements such as women desire. Oliver had no love for his home life. It seemed to Searell that indifference was settling upon them all. He advanced into the kitchen, stood between them as he had done before, looked at the man, and noticed something new, a kind of eagerness, which he tried to suppress; then at the woman, and here too was a difference, a softer face and eyes half ashamed. Perhaps, then, they could love, and a word from him might kindle the spark into flame.

"I interfered between you once before. It was for your good."

"No, master," said Sibley.

"I think so," he said, startled by her independence and rudeness.

"It would ha' been better if yew had passed by and let we bide," she went on; and when Oliver growled his "Shut your noise," it was with less anger than usual.

"Us could ha' done what us had a mind to then," she said. "This be a prison."

"We are all in prison, if you can understand me. The walls are all round, and we cannot get over them."

"'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to," said Sibley.

And again Searell was amazed. How had this woman obtained the power and the courage to answer him? And to beat him, for he was beaten. He had no words to reply to that simple philosophy, and to the woman who appealed from his decision. He had played the God with them, had brought them out of chaos, and had given them his commandments; and he was no God, but a weak man; and they were not his children.

He went back to his books, there were no flowers except Christmas-roses and snowdrops, shivering things of winter, and tried to dream. Nothing came. It seemed to him there was less mysticism in his mistland than in the dirty streets of Stonehouse; and, while he mused, that world came knocking at his mind, calling in the dialect of Sibley, "'Tis best vor volk to live as 'em be meant to." His own body, his sluggishness and unhappiness, convicted him of error; but, if he was wrong, what of all religion which tells of a God of mysticism, and of his own in particular, which, at that very season of the year, rejoiced at the birth of a Child-creator by mysticism not through Love? And at his mind was hot, red-blooded passion, a crude and awful thing, love for those things which make men horrible, love for dirt and the roots, not for bud and bloom; and a contempt and hatred for cold morality and the spells muttered by candlelight; and the message of the flowers was this: "Through the agency of others, through the eyes of those who are loved and loving, not by the confinement of self, souls find the dawn."

"Mrs. Vorse," said Searell one day, the yellow aconites were out, the first colour of the year, and he was going to look at them, "you have changed."

Sibley had her back towards him, engaged in cleaning, and she was wearing, as she always did, the enveloping apron of the country, which hung from her shoulders and surrounded her body like a sack. He could not see the flush upon her face.

"Your voice is softer. You sing at your work. You are happy."

"I hain't, master," she whispered. "I feels, master, I wants to be happy, but I be frightened."

"Of the loneliness?"

"Not that, master. I can't tell ye, but I be frightened."

"You and your husband get along better. You are quieter. I have not heard you quarrel for some time."

"There's good in Oliver," she said.

"I thought so," he murmured. "But I have not been able to bring it out."

He went to see the aconites, but they were cold, and made him shiver. It was warm innocence he wanted, not the purity which numbed; and, down below, the slopes were naked, the path rustled with dead oakleaves, and the pixy-water was in flood. The violence of the world was there, and nothing could drive it out.

"Is your wife well, Oliver?" he asked. "I heard a sound in your room early this morning. It seemed to me she was ill."

Vorse was uprooting bracken, which is hard labour, and he made no pause when his master spoke.

"I ha' never knowed she better," he answered.

"She frets less. There is a womanliness about her now which is pleasant. You, also, have very much improved. You speak to her gently. You do not drink now?"

"Her made me give it up."

"Had I nothing to do with it?"

"No, master," said Oliver bluntly. "I couldn't ha' given it up vor yew. I did try, but I couldn't, I promised to give it up vor Sibley."

"When?"

"Months ago. Her told me something, and 'twur then I promised to give it up vor Sibley."

"What did she tell you?"

"Her had received a message from God."

These were strange words from the mouth of Oliver Vorse.

"Her took 'em from yew, master," he added apologetically.

Searell moved aside, gazing at the black snakelike fern-roots. Then he lifted up his eyes in torment. His creatures finding in the garden what he had missed, taking his God away from him! the dull Sibley his superior, reaping the harvest that he had sown! the dull Oliver reforming for her, and not for him! And he had nothing, he was alone, as much alone in his garden as in the mission-church, obeying the printed rubrics and hearing the call, "Who told you to do this? Go out and find Me, for I am in the solitudes."

"You are educating yourselves," he suggested, turning back. "You and Sibley are improving your minds by learning. I have done that much for you."

Oliver said nothing, his head was down, and his hands grubbed at the great roots. There was no answer to make.

It was evening, the time of restlessness, and Searell came downstairs; his study was above, and he came down only to change his rooms, to get into another atmosphere, that he might find rest for his mind. The kitchen door was open. Oliver was seated in a low chair, and Sibley was upon his knees, her arms around his neck, her head upon his shoulder. Both were motionless as if asleep.

Searell went away. This time he could not interfere, and the noise of the wind became to him the cry of the wild world. "Men must be violent," it cried. "Men were made for passion," it cried; "and with the strength of the body, rather than by the gropings of the mind, they shall clear the mists from their eyes, and by means of the act of creation find Creator."

IV

A perfect evening is often the prelude to a stormy night. It was such an evening in spring again, when the wind-flowers were out, and an old man riding off the moor paused beside Searell's boundary-wall to prophesy a tempest. This was a white old man with queer blue eyes, and he too was a mystic under the spell of solitude; but, unlike Searell, he had his ties, without which no man can be happy. By day he roamed, and at evening, by the fireside, told the children small and great his own weird tales of Dartmoor. There were no restless evenings for him. Searell shook his head almost angrily. He lived upon the face of the moor, wrapped himself in its secrets, yet he could not foretell its weather. The passing cloud had no message, the river with its changing cry told him nothing. He went into the house.

"Where is your wife?" he said to Oliver.

"Her bain't well, master." The man was nervous, and his eyes were large.

"Who is that woman in the kitchen?"

"I had to get she up to do the cooking."

"You have neglected your work today."

"I be cruel sorry, master."

"What is the matter with your wife? Yesterday I heard her singing."

"Nothing serious, master"; but the man was listening all the time, as if dreading to hear a call, a cry of pain, or the voice of life coming along the moor.

The old man was right. So soon as night began, the Dartmoor tempest broke; there was no rain, nor thunder, but a dry and mighty wind which made the rocks shake; and through the storm came a weird light defying the wind to blow it out, that light which does not enter the lowlands, but lives upon mountains; and Searell stood at his high writing desk, and sought out legends of the wind.

If there were sounds in the house he could not hear them. Deep in mysticism, he read on of the winged clouds which brought the tempests, and of their symbols, the rock-shattering worm, the stone of wisdom which tears open the secrets of life, the rosy flower which restores the dead, the house-breaking hand of glory; and the eagle symbol of lightning, and the rushing raven returning to Odin. And he read of the voices in the wind, while boulders were grinding along the river-bed; of Hulda in the forest singing for baby-souls; of the Elf maidens alluring youths astray; of Thoth staggering into oblivion with brave men's spirits; of Hermes with his winged talaria, playing the lyre and shutting fast all the myriad eyes of the stars. And something more he read about the storm-wind. It was not always taking away, it was giving; it was a bringer of new life, coming in spring as a young god with golden hair, breaking the spell of winter, bringing a magic pipe to make folk dance.

"At one time it lulls into a mystic sleep, at another it restores to new life," said Searell, speaking loudly and strongly, partly to reassure himself, because the tumult was frightening. "What is this wind bringing to me, more of the mystic sleep, or the new life?"

He paced up and down the room, which shook as if with earthquake; and hidden from him by a partition of lath and plaster was the staring horror of a dream, one small lamp, turned down, giving the half-light which suggests terror more than darkness, and on the bed a woman moaning, and against the wall a weak man groaning. Let them rave and scream, no sound of theirs could have pierced that lath and plaster, for the god of violence was fighting on their side.

"There be only one way."

That was how Oliver had been muttering the last hour.

"No, no," she sobbed.

"What can us do? Master be hard, he bides by his word. He ha' been good to we in all else, but this be our ruin."

"No, no." She could not hear him, but she knew what he was saying.

"Back on them streets again. No home to cover we, no food. Us ha' lived easy too long to stand it. 'Twould end in the river. Better to lose the one than our two selves."

"No, no," her lips made the words, but not the sounds.

"'Tis only a matter o' two minutes," he cried fiercely. "Then us be free again." He left the wall, crossed to the bed, bent down, cried into her ear, "It be awful outside. The watter be roaring down under. Us mun live, woman."

Sibley lifted herself with a face of death, and screamed as if it had been the last effort of her life, screamed again and again; but what was that in the wind? Not even a whisper; while Searell read on of the Sons of Kalew, and the miracle of their harps which changed winter into summer and death into life.

Oliver Vorse was staggering downstairs weeping; and outside the wind caught him, dragged him hither and thither like a straw, stuffing his mouth with vapour, and flung him against bellowing walls and into shrieking bushes; and still he protected what he held by instinct, and when he fell upon the steep descent he let his body be bruised and his face torn by that same instinct which makes the timid beast a savage thing.

It took no time.... He was back in the ghastly lamplight, staring at a ghastly face which was the reflection of his own; and the master was still in his musing, and knew nothing.

"Let me die, I'd sooner," Sibley muttered simply; but Oliver could not hear. He was leaning against the wall again; then he went on his knees, and then he turned his back upon the bed. That face, the black hair, a blood-stain visible, they frightened him. He passed into a kind of agony; he was so cold and his body was dry, and there was a lightness in his limbs.

"The watter wur roaring—roaring. There warn't no wind, not there. It wur sheltered down under, and them little white flowers scarce shook."

He turned his head and saw those staring eyes.

"Bain't what yew thinks," he howled. "There wur moss, plenty on't. I made a bed beside the rocks. It bain't cold, not very; but the watter be rising—rising—rising."

So was the tempest. It would be nearing its end, and would drop as suddenly as it had arisen; and Searell was smiling as he read of the beasts of the forest weeping as they listened to the song-wind of Gunadhya.

"I can't go out. Might see it crawling up-along, trying to come back, little white thing in the dark."

Oliver could see Sibley was speaking, making with her agonized mouth the shape of words, "Go out." He could not, dared not, had not even the courage to open the door and look down the dimly lighted horror of the stairs. They were in the last stage of weakness, the one morally, the other physically; and the almighty strength of the wind gave them nothing except the security of its tumult.

"It'll be over," he shuddered. "The watter wur coming up all white. I couldn't bide there—there wur drops o' summat on my face, and 'twur so helpless, and it looked up. Blue, warn't 'em blue, woman?'"

Sibley could not have heard, but, with all those instincts quivering, she recognized the word upon his lips and tried to nod.

"Innocent. Hadn't done nought. Would ha' kep we good, made we man and wife. I'll go down. I'd go down if I dared—the little chin wur agin my cheek. I'll never face the dark. I'd see it move, and the little drowning bubbles on the watter. Be it over now?"

He glared at Sibley as if she could answer; and she stared back, asking, pleading, imploring him to play the man and face the night again; but he grovelled against the wall and shuddered, damp with an awful sweat, and the weird light upon the mountain-tops went out, because other clouds were coming up, having travelled far since evening, and the darkness became real as the roarings of the dry wind decreased. It was getting on towards midnight, and those mighty winds were tired.

"Go!" came a sudden scream; and Searell heard the echo of it and started. The cry seemed to have its origin in the storm. He closed his book, listened, heard nothing more except the coherent bellowing, and then he answered, "I will." Certainly the word had sounded, and as certainly he was alone. The Vorses would have been asleep for hours.

"I will walk along the path. It is sheltered down there," he murmured. "This may be the night appointed, the time of revelation, the time of young life. This is the mad music of the spring, the shattering of the chains of winter. The growth follows. It is the birth-night."

He wrapped a coat around him and went. During those few minutes the wind had much decreased; in another hour it would be calm and clear; and then the awful stillness of the sunrise and the perpetual wonder of the daylight.

There was again a kind of light, for the raven-clouds had gone by and the swan-clouds were crossing; and the wind was now the magic piper who drives away care, and with his merry music sets Nature capering. Searell was on the pixy-path and the wind-flowers were jigging; it was ghostly, but a dance, not a solemn marching as in autumn, when the leaves fall processionally downwards. It was recessional spring, when the leaves awoke, as it were, from their moon-loved sleep, preserved in unfading youth and beauty by that sleep, and leapt back at the piper's music to the branches, kissing their ancient oaks with the fervour of young love. Every flower had a moist eye and a sweet heart; and the pixy-water rang for festival.

One turn Searell made, seeing nothing, because his eyes struggled with the mist; another, and he stopped. There was a wonder, a miracle, a revelation among his wind-flowers, upon the edge of the rising water, a sleeping silent wonder which made him thrill.

"It has no bodily existence. When I come back it will be gone."

It was still there, and now the water was almost level with the bed of moss, and some of the flowers were struggling to keep their pale heads above; and it was silent, this child of the morning, lying upon its back in the moss, numbed, perhaps, though the night was not cold, and there was a beauty upon the small face, not the beauty which makes for violence, but that which gives peace, the beauty of innocence; and there was also upon it that perfect weakness, and the submission of weakness which is one of the strongest things created. And it seemed to be growing there like the wind-flowers, as fragile, but as hardy, and among them; for white anemones had been blown across each eye and across the mouth, and they gleamed from each ear, and the chin was another edged with pink, and all of them seemed to be jealous of the child.

"And it comes into the world by violence," Searell murmured.

Even then he hardly knew what had happened. He could not think, for his mind was full of the wonder, and commonplace ideas would not enter. He picked up the child reverently; there was no motion, no sound, no opening of bue eyes; had there been a shrill scream, the spell might have been broken—the contact was dreadful to him. He was tending a sacred mystery, elevating a sacrament newly consecrated, something which a few hours ago had been leaping like a spark in the place of his dreams, and had been flung as lightning upon his path to strike his heart open. Here was the answer of the flowers. To men the Creator was as a child, for the child is the only thing all-powerful and the only thing all-pure.

About the house Searell seemed to hear the sound of groaning like the moan of the dying wind, and there were movements once or twice as of a wounded body.

A dusty prie-dieu stood in the comer of the study. This he placed near the fire, a cushion upon it, and then the child; and lighted a candle upon each side. He stood with his arms folded, the Omega of life worshipping the Alpha of it, until all things seemed to be new and strange, as upon a resurrection morning, and he awoke from the sleep of death and felt the spring. The winter was over and past, the time of the opening of flowers had come, and the voice of creation stirred upon the garden; and the change had been wrought by violence.

It was necessary to speak and find sympathy. He hated the solitude because no one shared it with him; he had grown to hate the wonderful garden because there was no one to wonder at it with him; he hated himself because no one cared for him. "Oliver!" he called, breaking the horrible quietness, forgetful of the time. "Sibley!"

Movements followed, again like wounded bodies, and Searell remembered that the woman was ill and he had done nothing for her. He went to the door; it opened, and Vorse was cowering against the wall, his hand upon his eyes. Searell hardly noticed the horrid smoking of the lamplight, the eyes upon that bed, the guilty, frightened man. Still full of himself, he cried:

"Come and see what I have found."

"I couldn't do it, master," moaned Oliver. "I took it down, but the eyes opened. 'Don't ye hurt me,' it said. I be just come. Bain't time vor me to go.'"

Still Searell would not understand.

"Come," he said impatiently. "She was upon my path, among my flowers."

Then life stirred again upon the bed, and Sibley drew herself up with ravenous eyes and muttered:

"Alive—alive!"

Soon the room was like a chapel. The smoky lamp had been extinguished, the prie-dieu stood beside the bed, the candles cast a warm, soft light; and outside upon the moor was peace. Even the merry piper had become weary and had put all things to sleep till daybreak; while Oliver Vorse upon his knees confessed the sin which had been forced upon him.

"Us dared not keep she. Sibley dared, but not me. If a child wur born, us must go, yew said. I couldn't face it, but her would ha' faced it. Us be ready to go now," he said boldly. "I ha' these hands. I'll fight. I ha' the maiden to fight vor."

"Her lives. Her moves on my bosom," cried Sibley. "Look at 'em, master. Did ye ever see the like?"

"What made you kinder, Sibley, more attentive to me, soft and tender?"

"'Twur the child coming, master."

"What made you sober, Oliver, fond of your wife? What was it stopped the quarelling?"

"I minded the little child, master."

There was something tender in their illiterate speech.

"You cast her away. The sin is mine, so is the atonement. And she is mine."

"She'm mine, master," murmured Sibley.

"I found her among my flowers, the reward of my searching. She is the answer," he said. "Let her be to you the daughter of love, and to me the daughter of violence. Oliver," he cried, turning, "bring up water from the pixy-stream. As the sun rises I will baptise—my child."

"Yew'm fond o' she, master?"

"She is mine," he said, with the old impatience.

"And we, master?"

"I am old and you are young," said Searell. "But we are all beginning life, we know nothing. We will try to find another and a better pathway."

He went back to his rooms to rest, but not to sleep, for there was something burning inside him like a coal from the altar; and a new light crept upon the moor, giving it form, changing it from black to purple. It was the dawn.