and
blends together land and sky; but it has breaks of exquisite
transparencies, through which the gold of the sunbeam shines, and the
rose of the dawn blushes, and the summits of the hills gleam here and
there, with a white monastery, or a mountain belfry, or a cluster of
cypresses seen through it, hung in the air as it were, and framed like
pictures in the silvery mist.

It is no noxious steam rising from the rivers and the rains: no grey and
oppressive obliteration of the face of the world like the fogs of the
north; no weight on the lungs and blindness to the eyes; no burden of
leaden damp lying heavy on the soil and on the spirit; no wall built up
between the sun and men; but a fog that is as beautiful as the full
moonlight is--nay, more beautiful, for it has beams of warmth, glories
of colour, glimpses of landscape such as the moon would coldly kill; and
the bells ring, and the sheep bleat, and the birds sing underneath its
shadow; and the sun-rays come through it, darted like angels' spears:
and it has in it all the promise of the morning, and all the sounds of
the waking day.

* * *

A great darkness was over all his mind like the plague of that unending
night which brooded over Egypt.

All the ferocity of his nature was scourged into its greatest strength;
he was sensible of nothing except the sense that he was beaten in the
one aim and purpose of his life.

Only--if by any chance he could still save the boy.

That one thought--companion with him, sleeping and waking, through so
many joyless nights--stayed with him still.

It seemed to him that he would have strength to scale the very heights
of heaven, and shake the very throne of God until He heard--to save the
boy.

The night was far gone; the red of the day-dawn began to glow, and the
stars paled.

He did not know how time went; but he knew the look of the daybreak.
When the skies looked so through his grated windows at home, he rose and
said a prayer, and went down and unbarred his doors, and led out his
white beasts to the plough, or between the golden lines of the reaped
corn; all that was over now.

The birds were waking on the old green hills and the crocus flowers
unclosing; but he----

"I shall never see it again," he thought, and his heart yearned to it,
and the great, hot, slow tears of a man's woe stole into his aching eyes
and burned them. But he had no pity on himself.

He had freedom and health and strength