own by the precipice
where he had worked away his life. It was the sleeping time at last.
Below him over the valleys rolled the thick white mist. Once it broke;
and through the gap the dying eyes looked down on the trees and fields
of their childhood. From afar seemed borne to him the cry of his own
wild birds, and he heard the noise of people singing as they danced. And
he thought he heard among them the voices of his old comrades; and
he saw far off the sunlight shine on his early home. And great tears
gathered in the hunter's eyes.

"'Ah! They who die there do not die alone,' he cried.

"Then the mists rolled together again; and he turned his eyes away.

"'I have sought,' he said, 'for long years I have laboured; but I have
not found her. I have not rested, I have not repined, and I have not
seen her; now my strength is gone. Where I lie down worn out other men
will stand, young and fresh. By the steps that I have cut they will
climb; by the stairs that I have built they will mount. They will never
know the name of the man who made them. At the clumsy work they will
laugh; when the stones roll they will curse me. But they will mount, and
on my work; they will climb, and by my stair! They will find her, and
through me! And no man liveth to himself and no man dieth to himself.'

"The tears rolled from beneath the shrivelled eyelids. If Truth had
appeared above him in the clouds now he could not have seen her, the
mist of death was in his eyes.

"'My soul hears their glad step coming,' he said; 'and they shall mount!
they shall mount!' He raised his shrivelled hand to his eyes.

"Then slowly from the white sky above, through the still air, came
something falling, falling, falling. Softly it fluttered down, and
dropped on to the breast of the dying man. He felt it with his hands. It
was a feather. He died holding it."

The boy had shaded his eyes with his hand. On the wood of the carving
great drops fell. The stranger must have laughed at him, or remained
silent. He did so.

"How did you know it?" the boy whispered at last. "It is not written
there--not on that wood. How did you know it?"

"Certainly," said the stranger, "the whole of the story is not written
here, but it is suggested. And the attribute of all true art, the
highest and the lowest, is this--that it rays more than it says, and
takes you away from itself. It is a little door that opens into an
infinite hall where you may find what you please. Men,