there was a strange sort of kinship between him
and the bird--a kinship and understanding which touched a chord of ready
feeling in his heart. The ominous hoot of an owl in the wood startled
him, and he rose to his feet. He could not sit still. Idleness would
drive him mad. He strode off on to the moor, away from the track, his
whole being burning in torture, and his mind a mass of unconnected
fancies and pains.

Over the bogs and through the marshes, the madness of despair within
him, he heeded not the deep ditches and the bog-pools. They were the
pits of darkness, the sty-pools, which his soul must either cross, or in
which he must perish. He tore up the hills into the mists and the rising
storm, the thick clouds, full of rain, enveloping him, and matching the
terrible fury of his breast.

On, ever on, in the darkness and the mire, through clumps of whin and
stray bushes of wild briar. On, always on, driven and lashed into action
by the resistless desire to get away from himself. He knew not the
direction he had taken. He had lost his bearings on the moor; the
darkness had completely hidden the landmarks, and even had he been
conscious of his actions, he could not have told in which part of the
moor he was.

"Oh, God!" he groaned again, almost falling over a bush of broom; and
sitting down, he buried his face in his hands, and, forgetful of the
wind and the rain, which now drove down in torrents, sat and brooded and
thought, his mind seeking to understand the chaos of despair.

What was the meaning of life? What was beyond it after death? Would
immortality, if such there were, be worth having? Men in countless,
unthinkable millions, had lived, and loved, and lost, and passed on. Did
immortality carry with it pain and suffering for them? If not, did it
carry happiness and balm? To hell with religions and philosophies, he
thought; they were all a parcel of fairy tales to drug men's minds and
keep them tame; and he glared impotently at the pitiless heavens, as if
he would defy gods, and devils, and men. He would be free--free in mind,
in thought, and unhampered by unrealities!

No. Men had the shaping of their own lives. Pride would be his ally. He
would lock up this episode in his heart, and at the end of time for him,
there would be an end of the pain and the regret, when he was laid among
the myriad millions of men of all the countless ages since man had
being.

This was immortality; to be forever robed in the