ertain objects and occurrences standing prominent enough to clear the
moonlight mist enwrapping the rest.

What the precise nature of his misery was I shall not even attempt to
conjecture. That would be to intrude within the holy place of a human
heart. One thing alone I will venture to affirm--that bitterness against
either of his friends, whose spirits rushed together and left his
outside, had no place in that noble nature. His fate lay behind him,
like the birth of Shargar, like the death of Ericson, a decree.

I do not even know in what direction he first went. That he had seen
many cities and many countries was apparent from glimpses of ancient
streets, of mountain-marvels, of strange constellations, of things in
heaven and earth which no one could have seen but himself, called up by
the magic of his words. A silent man in company, he talked much when
his hour of speech arrived. Seldom, however, did he narrate any incident
save in connection with some truth of human nature, or fact of the
universe.

I do know that the first thing he always did on reaching any new place
was to visit the church with the loftiest spire; but he never looked
into the church itself until he had left the earth behind him as far as
that church would afford him the possibility of ascent. Breathing the
air of its highest region, he found himself vaguely strengthened, yes
comforted. One peculiar feeling he had, into which I could enter only
upon happy occasion, of the presence of God in the wind. He said the
wind up there on the heights of human aspiration always made him long
and pray. Asking him one day something about his going to church so
seldom, he answered thus:

'My dear boy, it does me ten times more good to get outside the spire
than to go inside the church. The spire is the most essential, and
consequently the most neglected part of the building. It symbolizes the
aspiration without which no man's faith can hold its own. But the effort
of too many of her priests goes to conceal from the worshippers the
fact that there is such a stair, with a door to it out of the church. It
looks as if they feared their people would desert them for heaven. But
I presume it arises generally from the fact that they know of such an
ascent themselves, only by hearsay. The knowledge of God is good, but
the church is better!'

'Could it be,' I ventured to suggest, 'that, in order to ascend, they
must put off the priests' garments?'

'Good, my boy!