set, and the spring buds and flowers come out as soon as the red
and yellow leaves of autumn had fallen--yet he saw that one wave
followed another to break against the shore, and that every flower was
a bud before it was a blossom, and that no happiness was so happy as
that which had been waited for; so he believed that the secret of the
shell would disclose itself when the right time should come, and
that to try to find it out beforehand would perhaps be to lose it
altogether. Moreover, was not the shell beautiful enough as it was?

CHAPTER II.

OSCAR INSIDE OUT.

When these early morning hours were over, Oscar used to go out of the
cottage and wander about beside the sea. The waves murmured to him,
and the sun was warm; the seagulls wheeled above his head and screamed
with their wild voices; great white clouds built themselves into
cities and palaces before his eyes; lights and shadows wavered
everywhere, and made the grey rocks and the distant mountains seem
alive; winds whispered in the long grass, and sang crooning melodies
in the branches of the trees; little insects and animals ran hither
and thither, and seemed busy even when they were doing nothing.
Sometimes the rain fell, making a secret sound in the leaves, and
causing the surface of the clear pools to leap aloft in tiny pyramids;
then the green plants stood up and stretched out their stems, taking
their wetting gladly, and growing taller after it, though it had made
them bob their heads. With the evening, splendid colours came along
the sky, though the hand that painted them was not seen: they, too,
spoke a kind of language; the glories of the day that was past, and
the thoughts and hopes that Oscar had had, seemed to glow in the
heavens as they glowed in the boy's memory. They faded at last, and
night darkened the world, so that Oscar might not forget the moon and
stars. These never slept, and therefore Oscar knew that he might
sleep. The rays that came from them found their way silently into his
heart, and filled it with the fresh and quiet fancies that afterwards
grew into dreams. For his dreams did not come from the world he lived
in, but from some other.

But what was this that the waves and the birds, and the light and
shadow, and the trees and the rain, and all the rest of it, were
trying to say to him? Was it really anything? and if it were, why
could he not understand it? Sometimes he thought he almost understood
it. If the things wou