the dark outline of the trees. The water
was deep; there were no rocks, no hidden banks; he did not make all the
haste he could, but rowed on meditatively--he was always more or less
attracted by solitude. To-night the mechanical exercise, the darkness,
the absolute loneliness, were greater rest to him than sleep would have
been. In a despairing dull sort of way he was praying all the time; his
mind had contracted a habit of prayer, at least if expressing his
thoughts to the divine Being in the belief that they were heard may be
called prayer.

Probably no one so old or so wise but that he will behave childishly if
he can but feel himself exactly in the same relation to a superior being
that a child feels to a grown man. Toyner expressed his grievance over
and over again with childlike simplicity; he explained to God that he
could not feel it to be right or fair that, when he had prayed so very
much, and prayers of the sort to which a blessing was promised, he
should be given over to the damning power of circumstance, launched in a
career of back-sliding, and made thereby, not only an object of greater
scorn to all men than if he had never reformed, but actually, as it
appeared to him, more worthy of scorn.

He did not expect his complaints to be approved by the Deity, and gained
therefore no satisfying sense that the prayer had ascended to heaven.

The moon arose, the night was very warm; into the aromatic haze a mist
was arising from the water on all sides. It was not so thick but that he
could see his path through it in the darkness; but when the light came
he found a thin film of vapour between him and everything at which he
looked. The light upon it was so great that it seemed to be luminous in
itself, and it had a slightly magnifying power, so that distances looked
greater, objects looked larger, and the wild desolate scene with which
he was familiar had an aspect that was awful because so unfamiliar.

When Toyner realised what the full effect of the moonlight was going to
be, he dropped his oars and sat still for a few minutes, wondering if
he would be able to find the landmarks that were necessary, so strange
did the landscape look, so wonderful and gigantic were the shapes which
the dead trees assumed. Then he continued his path, looking for a tree
that was black and blasted by lightning. He was obliged to grope his way
close to the trees; thus his boat bumped once or twice on hidden stumps.
It occurred to h