hout accomplishments or experience, should have gone all
these years without finding that

"Not impossible she
Who shall command my heart and me,"--

without meeting at some turning of the way the mystical Golden
Girl,--without, in short, finding a wife?

"Then," suggested the idea, with a blush for its own absurdity, "why
not go on pilgrimage and seek her? I don't believe you'll find her.
She isn't usually found after thirty. But you'll no doubt have good
fun by the way, and fall in with many pleasant adventures."

"A brave idea, indeed!" I cried. "By Heaven, I will take stick and
knapsack and walk right away from my own front door, right away where
the road leads, and see what happens." And now, if the reader please,
we will make a start.

CHAPTER III

AN INDICTMENT OF SPRING

"Marry! an odd adventure!" I said to myself, as I stepped along in the
spring morning air; for, being a pilgrim, I was involuntarily in a
mediaeval frame of mind, and "Marry! an odd adventure!" came to my lips
as though I had been one of that famous company that once started from
the Tabard on a day in spring.

It had been the spring, it will be remembered, that had prompted them
to go on pilgrimage; and me, too, the spring was filling with strange,
undefinable longings, and though I flattered myself that I had set out
in pursuance of a definitely taken resolve, I had really no more
freedom in the matter than the children who followed at the heels of
the mad piper.

A mad piper, indeed, this spring, with his wonderful lying music,--ever
lying, yet ever convincing, for when was Spring known to keep his word?
Yet year after year we give eager belief to his promises. He may have
consistently broken them for fifty years, yet this year he will keep
them. This year the dream will come true, the ship come home. This
year the very dead we have loved shall come back to us again: for
Spring can even lie like that. There is nothing he will not promise
the poor hungry human heart, with his innocent-looking daisies and
those practised liars the birds. Why, one branch of hawthorn against
the sky promises more than all the summers of time can pay, and a pond
ablaze with yellow lilies awakens such answering splendours and
enchantments in mortal bosoms,--blazons, it would seem, so august a
message from the hidden heart of the world,--that ever afterwards, for
one who has looked upon it, the most fortunate human existence