r darling went out from the
paternal nest to shake those limp wings of his, and bear himself up
unassisted in a new atmosphere in the best way he could.

It was on the cold and rainy evening of a cold and rainy summer's day
that Alick arrived at Monk Grange--an evening without a sunset or a
moon, stars or a landscape; painful, mournful, as those who dwell in the
North Country know only too well as the tears on its face of beauty. He
had driven in a crazy old gig from Wigton, and the nine miles which lay
between that not too brilliant town and the desolate fell-side hamlet
which he had been so fain to make his own spiritual domain had not been
such as disposed him to a cheerful view of things. The rain had fallen
in a steady, pitiless downpour, which seemed to soak through every outer
covering and to penetrate the very flesh and marrow of the tired
traveler as it pattered noisily on the umbrella and streamed over the
leather apron; and the splash of the horse's hoofs through the liquid
mud and broad tracts of standing water was as dreary as the "splash,
splash" of Buerger's ballad. And when all this was over, and they drew up
at the Blucher, with its handful of desolate gray hovels round it, the
heart of the man sank at the gloomy surroundings into the midst of which
he had flung himself. But the zeal of the churchman was as good a tonic
for him as the best common sense, and he waited until to-morrow and
broad daylight before he allowed himself to even acknowledge an
impression. The warm fireside at the Blucher cheered him too, and his
supper of eggs and bacon and fresh crisp havre-bread satisfied such of
his physical cravings as, unsatisfied, make a man's spiritual
perceptions very gaunt.

He went to bed, slept, and the next day woke up to a glory of sun and
sky, a brilliancy of coloring, a photographic sharpness and clearness of
form, a suggestion of beauty beyond that which was seen, which
transformed the place as if an angel had passed through it in the night.
As he tramped about the sordid hamlet he forgot the rude uncouthness of
men and place for a kind of ecstasy at the loveliness about him. Every
jutting rock of granite shone in the sun like polished jasper, and the
numberless little rills trickling down the fell-sides were as threads of
silver, now concealed in the gold of the gorse, and now whitening the
purple of the heather. The air was full of blithesome sounds. Overhead
the sky-larks sang in jocund rivalry