d of him--for nothing can
be well learnt except through love and trust. He would sometimes think
that he should have been a monk, and that under hard discipline he would
have fared better--and indeed this was so, for he had abundant aptitude.
He was alone in the world, for he had come into his estate when young;
but he had had no patience to win him a wife. At first, indeed, his life
had not been an unhappy one, for he was often visited by small joyful
thoughts, which made him glad; and he took much pleasure, on sunshiny
days, in the brave sights and sounds of the world. But such delights had
grown less; and he was now a tired and restless man of forty years, who
lay long abed and went not much abroad; and was for ever telling himself
how happy he would be if this or that were otherwise. Far down in his
heart he despised himself, and wondered how God had come to make so
ill-contented a thing; but that was a chamber in his mind that he
visited not often; but rather took pleasure in the thought of his skill
and deftness, and his fitness for the many things he might have done.

And now in the war he had come to a pass. He would not join himself to
the king, because the king was an evil man, and he liked not evil; yet
he loved not rebellion, and feared for his safety if the king had the
upper hand; but it was still more that he had grown idle and
soft-hearted, and feared the hard faring and brisk jesting of the camp.
Yet even so the thought of the war lay heavy on his heart, and he
wondered how men, whose lives were so short upon the goodly earth,
should find it in their hearts to slay and be slain for such shadowy
things as command and dominion; and he thought he would have made a song
on that thought, but he did not.

And now the fighting had come very near him; and he had let some of his
men go to join the king, but he went not himself, saying that he was
sick, and might not go abroad.

He stood on a day, at this time, by a little wall that enclosed his
garden-ground. It was in the early summer; the trees had put on their
fresh green, and glistened in the still air, and the meadows were deep
with grass, on the top of which seemed to float unnumbered yellow
flowers. In and out the swallows passed, hunting for the flies that
danced above the grass; and he stood, knowing how fair the earth was,
and yet sick at heart, wondering why he could not be as a careless bird,
that hunts its meat all day in the sun, and at evening s