*

On the road to the Alm, of moonlight nights, toiling visitors catch
glimpses of a human, almost a skeleton, dressed in rags, his head bare
as his feet, about his neck a flaming crimson handkerchief. He is known
to Marienbaeders as "The Man Who Stayed Too Long." He never addresses
passers-by; but as they lose sight of him they hear the woods resound
with his elegiac howl:--

_La la liriti! La la lirita! Hallali!_

X

THE THIRD KINGDOM

I

A DOUBTER

Brother Hyzlo sat in his cell and read. The gentle stillness of a rare
spring morning enveloped him with its benison. And the clear light fell
upon the large pages of a book in his hand,--the window through which it
streamed was the one link between the young recluse and the life of the
world. From it he could see the roofs of the city beneath him; when he
so wished, he might, without straining his gaze, distinguish the
Pantheon at the end of that triumphal avenue which spanned the Seine and
had once evoked for him visions of antique splendour. But Brother Hyzlo
no longer cared for mundane delights. His doubting soul was the
battle-field over which he ranged day and night searching for diabolic
opponents. Exterior existence had become for him a shadow; the only life
worth living was that of the spirit.

In his book that fresh spring morning he read as if in the flare of a
passing meteor these disquieting words:--

"How were it if, some day or night, a demon stole after thee into thy
most solitary solitude, and said to thee: 'This life, as thou livest it
now, and hast lived it, thou shalt have to live over again, and not once
but innumerable times; and there will be nothing new in it, but every
pain and every pleasure and every thought and sigh, and everything in
thy life, the great and the unspeakably petty alike, must come again to
thee, and all in the same series and succession; this spider, too, and
this moonlight betwixt the trees and this moment likewise and I myself.
The eternal sand-glass of time is always turned again, and thou with it,
thou atom of dust'? Wouldst thou not cast thyself down and with gnashing
of teeth curse the demon who thus spoke? Or, hast thou ever experienced
the tremendous moment in which thou wouldst answer him: 'Thou art a god
and never heard I anything more divine'?"

The book slipped from his hands. "Why not?" he murmured, "why not? There
is no such thing as chance. The law of probabilities is not a mere
fancy, but a