the sun from the still pool, had a sense of joy and delight. It was
passing, passing; Hugh could trace in thought every mile of the way;
down the wooded valley it was bound, running over the brown gravel, by
shady wood-ends and pasture-sides; then it would pass out into the
plain, and run, a full and brimming stream, between high sandy banks,
half hidden by the thick, glossy-leaved alders. Hugh knew the broad
water-meadows down below, with the low hills on either side, where big
water-plants grew in marshy places, and where the cattle moved slowly
about through the still hours. Soon the stream would be running by the
great downs--it was a river now, bearing boats upon it--till it passed
by the wharves and beneath the bridges of the little town, and out into
the great sea-flat, meeting, with how strange a wonder, the
upward-creeping briny tide, with its sharp savours and its wholesome
smell; till it flowed at last by the docks, where the big steamers lay
unlading, blowing their loud sea-horns, past weed-fringed piers and
shingly beaches, until it was mingled with the moving deep, where the
waves ran higher on the blue sea-line, and the great buoy rolled and
dipped above the shoal.

And then, perhaps, it would be drawn up again in twisted wreaths of
mist, rising in vapour beneath the breathless sun, to float back,
perhaps, in clouds over the earth, and begin its little pilgrimage
again.

Was the same true, he wondered, of himself, of everything about him?
Was it all a never-ending, an unwearying pilgrimage? Was death itself
but the merging of the atom in the element, and then, perhaps, the race
began again? On such a day as this, of bright sun and eager air, it
seemed sweet to think that it was even so. This soul-stuff, that one
called oneself, wafted out of the unknown, strangely entangled with the
bodily elements, would it perhaps mingle again with earthly conditions,
borne round and round in an endless progression? Yet, if this was so,
why did one seem, not part of the world, but a thing so wholly distinct
and individual? To-day, indeed, Hugh seemed to be akin to the earth,
and felt as though all that breathed or moved and lived had a
brotherly, a sisterly greeting for him. As he moved slowly on up the
steep road, a child playing by the wayside, encouraged perhaps by a
loving brightness that rose from Hugh's heart into his face, nodded and
smiled to him shyly. Hugh smiled back, and waved his hand. That
ch