e." Leaning against the wall, with his feet
twelve inches from it, he rose slowly on his toes. "Do you know that
exercise? It is excellent for the calves of the legs, and for the lumbar
regions." So saying, Mr. Stone left the wall, and began again to pace
the room; the whitewash had also left the wall, and clung in a large
square patch on his shaggy coat. "I have seen sheep in Spring," he said,
"actually imitate their lambs in rising from the ground with all four
legs at once." He stood still. A thought had evidently struck him.

"If Life is not all Spring, it is of no value whatsoever; better to die,
and to begin again. Life is a tree putting on a new green gown; it is a
young moon rising--no, that is not so, we do not see the young moon
rising--it is a young moon setting, never younger than when we are about
to die--"

Bianca cried out sharply: "Don't, Father! Don't talk like that; it's so
untrue! Life is all autumn, it seems to me!"

Mr. Stone's eyes grew very blue.

"That is a foul heresy," he stammered; "I cannot listen to it. Life is
the cuckoo's song; it is a hill-side bursting into leaf; it is the wind;
I feel it in me every day!"

He was trembling like a leaf in the wind he spoke of, and Bianca moved
hastily towards him, holding out her arms. Suddenly his lips began to
move; she heard him mutter: "I have lost force; I will boil some milk. I
must be ready when she comes." And at those words her heart felt like a
lump of ice.

Always that girl! And without again attracting his attention she went
away. As she passed out through the garden she saw him at the window
holding a cup of milk, from which the steam was rising.

CHAPTER XXVI

THIRD PILGRIMAGE TO HOUND STREET

Like water, human character will find its level; and Nature, with her way
of fitting men to their environment, had made young Martin Stone what
Stephen called a "Sanitist." There had been nothing else for her to do
with him.

This young man had come into the social scheme at a moment when the
conception of existence as a present life corrected by a life to come,
was tottering; and the conception of the world as an upper-class preserve
somewhat seriously disturbed.

Losing his father and mother at an early age, and brought up till he was
fourteen by Mr. Stone, he had formed the habit of thinking for himself.
This had rendered him unpopular, and added force to the essential
single-heartedness transmitted to him throu