t he finds is the important thing. I fancy the mystics would have
been nearer the mark if they had said that their experiences during
their period of exaltation could not be reported, or that it would be
idle to report them, since their questioners lived on the ground
and would be quite incapable on account of the mind's limitations of
conceiving a state above it and outside of its own experience.

The glory passed and with it the exaltation: the earth and sea turned
grey; the last boat was drawn up on the slope and the men departed
slowly: only one remained, a rough-looking youth, about fifteen years
old. Some important matter which he was revolving in his mind had
detained him alone on the darkening beach. He sat down, then stood up
and gazed at the rolling wave after wave to roar and hiss on the shingle
at his feet; then he moved restlessly about, crunching pebbles beneath
his thick boots; finally, making up his mind, he took off his coat,
threw it down, and rolled up his shirt-sleeves, with the resolute air
of a man about to engage in a fight with an adversary nearly as big as
himself. Stepping back a little space, he made a rush at the sea, not
to cast himself in it, but only, as it turned out, with the object
of catching some water in the hollow of his hands from the top of an
incoming wave. He only succeeded in getting his legs wet, and in hastily
retreating he fell on his back. Nothing daunted, he got up and renewed
the assault, and when he succeeded in catching water in his hands
he dashed it on and vigorously rubbed it over his dirty face. After
repeating the operation about a dozen times, receiving meanwhile several
falls and wettings, he appeared satisfied, put on his coat and marched
away homewards with a composed air.

Chapter Twenty: Salisbury Revisited

Since that visit to Salisbury, described in a former chapter, when I
watched and listened to the doves in those cold days in early spring, I
have been there a good many times, but never at the time when the bird
colony is most interesting to observe, just before and during the early
part of the breeding-season. At length, in the early days of June, 1908,
the wished opportunity was mine--wished yet feared, seeing that it
was possible some disaster had fallen upon that unique colony of
stock-doves. It is true they appeared to be long established and well
able to maintain their foothold on the building in spite of malicious
persecuting daws, but th