of
unimaginable love. In such a mood as this, Hugh felt that he could
wait in utter confidence; that he could drink in with glad eyes and
ears the beautiful and delicate things that were shown to him, the
rich, luxuriant foliage, the dim sun-warmed stream, the silent trees,
the old towers. There seemed to him nothing that he could not bear,
nothing that he could not gladly do, when so tender a hand was leading
him. He knew indeed that he would again be impatient, restless,
wilful; but for the moment it was as though he had tasted of some
mysterious sacrament; that the wine of some holy cup had been put to
his lips; that he knew that he was not alone, but in the very heart of
a wise and patient God.

XXXVIII

The Lakes--On the Fell--Peace

It was in the later weeks of a hot, still midsummer that Hugh escaped
from Cambridge to the Lakes. He did not realise, until he found
himself driving in the cool of the evening beside Windermere, how
parched and dry his very mind had become in the long heats of the
sun-dried flats. Sometimes the road wound down to the very edge of the
water, lapping deliciously among the stones; sometimes it skirted the
pleasaunces of a cool sheltered villa which lay embowered in trees,
blinking contentedly across the lake. The sight of the great green
hills with their skirts clothed with wood, with trees straggling
upwards along the water-courses, the miniature crags escaping from
oak-coppices, the black heads of bleak mountains, filled him with an
exquisite and speechless delight.

It was sunset before he reached his destination, which was a large
house of rough stone, much festooned with creepers, which crowned a
little height at the base of the fells, in the centre of a wild wood.
The house was that of a very old man, hard on his ninetieth year, a
relative of Hugh's, and an old friend of his family. There was a short
cut to the house among the woods, and Hugh left the carriage to go
round by the drive, while he himself walked up. The path was a little
track among copses, roofed over by interlacing boughs, and giving an
abundance of pretty glimpses to right and left of the unvisited places
of the wood; old brown boulders covered with moss, with ash-suckers
shooting out among the stones, little streams rippling downwards, small
green lawns fringed with low trees. The western valley was full of a
rich golden light, and the wooded ridges rose quietly one after
another, with the