ont of the
isle,--all that I saw and felt my predecessors must have seen and felt
with scarce a difference. I steeped myself in open air and in past ages.

"Delightful would it be to me to be in _Uchd Ailiun_
On the pinnacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful birds,
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding waves
Upon the rocks:
At times at work without compulsion--
This would be delightful;
At times plucking dulse from the rocks;
At times at fishing."

So, about the next island of Iona, sang Columba himself twelve hundred
years before. And so might I have sung of Earraid.

And all the while I was aware that this life of sea-bathing and
sun-burning was for me but a holiday. In that year cannon were roaring
for days together on French battle-fields; and I would sit in my isle (I
call it mine, after the use of lovers) and think upon the war, and the
loudness of these far-away battles, and the pain of the men's wounds,
and the weariness of their marching. And I would think too of that other
war which is as old as mankind, and is indeed the life of man; the
unsparing war, the grinding slavery of competition; the toil of seventy
years, dear-bought bread, precarious honour, the perils and pitfalls,
and the poor rewards. It was a long look forward; the future summoned me
as with trumpet calls, it warned me back as with a voice of weeping and
beseeching; and I thrilled and trembled on the brink of life, like a
childish bather on the beach.

There was another young man on Earraid in these days, and we were much
together, bathing, clambering on the boulders, trying to sail a boat and
spinning round instead in the oily whirlpools of the roost. But the most
part of the time we spoke of the great uncharted desert of our futures;
wondering together what should there befall us; hearing with surprise
the sound of our own voices in the empty vestibule of youth. As far, and
as hard, as it seemed then to look forward to the grave, so far it seems
now to look backward upon these emotions; so hard to recall justly that
loath submission, as of the sacrificial bull, with which we stooped our
necks under the yoke of destiny. I met my old companion but the other
day; I cannot tell of course what he was thinking; but, upon my part, I
was wondering to see us both so much at home, and so composed and
se