meeting in her garden? The first kiss! Moonlight and mandolins!

A shudder of pleasure passes through his weary body. Bright
recollections and impressions flock towards him like spirits of
light--he can hear the rushing sound of their wings--he calls to them
for aid, and they encircle him round; they struggle with the spirits of
darkness for his soul. He has known much brightness, much beauty in his
life--surely the bright angels are the stronger and must conquer. Ah!
why had he not lived royally, amidst women and flowers and wine?

One morning as he was getting up, he said: "Merle, I must and will hit
upon something that'll send me to bed thoroughly tired out."

"Yes dear," she answered. "Do try."

"I'll try wheeling stones to begin with," he said. "The devil's in it if
a day at that doesn't make a man sleep."

So that day and for many days he wheeled stones from some newly broken
land on the hillside down to a dyke that ran along the road.

Calm, golden autumn days; one farm above another rising up towards the
crest of the range, all set in ripe yellow fields. One little cottage
stands right on the crest against the sky itself, and it, too, has its
tiny patch of yellow corn. And an eagle sails slowly across the deep
valley from peak to peak.

People passing by stared at Peer as he went about bare-headed, in his
shirt-sleeves, wheeling stones. "Aye, gentlefolks have queer notions,"
they would say, shaking their heads.

"That's it--keep at it," a dry, hacking voice kept going in Peer's head.
"It is idiocy, but you are doomed to it. Shove hard with those skinny
legs of yours; many a jade before you has had to do the same. You've got
to get some sleep tonight. Only ten months left now; and then we shall
have Lucifer turning up at the cross-roads once more. Poor Merle--she's
beginning to grow grey. And the poor little children--dreaming of father
beating them, maybe, they cry out so often in their sleep. Off now,
trundle away. Now over with that load; and back for another.

"You, that once looked down on the soulless toil for bread, you have
sunk now to something far more miserable. You are dragging at a load
of sheer stupidity. You are a galley-slave, with calamity for your
task-master. As you move the chains rattle. And that is your day."

He straightens himself up, wipes the sweat from his forehead, and begins
heaving up stones into his barrow again.

How long must it last, this life in manacles? Do you remem