ng me after it.

I walked round the border of the little mere, and climbed the range of
hills. What a sight rose to my eyes! The whole expanse where, with hot,
aching feet, I had crossed and recrossed the deep-scored channels and
ravines of the dry river-bed, was alive with streams, with torrents,
with still pools--"a river deep and wide"! How the moon flashed on the
water! how the water answered the moon with flashes of its own--white
flashes breaking everywhere from its rock-encountered flow! And a great
jubilant song arose from its bosom, the song of new-born liberty. I
stood a moment gazing, and my heart also began to exult: my life was not
all a failure! I had helped to set this river free!--My dead were not
lost! I had but to go after and find them! I would follow and follow
until I came whither they had gone! Our meeting might be thousands of
years away, but at last--AT LAST I should hold them! Wherefore else did
the floods clap their hands?

I hurried down the hill: my pilgrimage was begun! In what direction to
turn my steps I knew not, but I must go and go till I found my living
dead! A torrent ran swift and wide at the foot of the range: I rushed
in, it laid no hold upon me; I waded through it. The next I sprang
across; the third I swam; the next I waded again.

I stopped to gaze on the wondrous loveliness of the ceaseless flash and
flow, and to hearken to the multitudinous broken music. Every now and
then some incipient air would seem about to draw itself clear of the
dulcet confusion, only to merge again in the consorted roar. At moments
the world of waters would invade as if to overwhelm me--not with the
force of its seaward rush, or the shouting of its liberated throng, but
with the greatness of the silence wandering into sound.

As I stood lost in delight, a hand was laid on my shoulder. I turned,
and saw a man in the prime of strength, beautiful as if fresh from the
heart of the glad creator, young like him who cannot grow old. I looked:
it was Adam. He stood large and grand, clothed in a white robe, with the
moon in his hair.

"Father," I cried, "where is she? Where are the dead? Is the great
resurrection come and gone? The terror of my loneliness was upon me;
I could not sleep without my dead; I ran from the desolate
chamber.--Whither shall I go to find them?"

"You mistake, my son," he answered, in a voice whose very breath was
consolation. "You are still in the chamber of death, still upon your