y road, never resting,
never murmuring. "For the way at best is a vale of tears," said they,
"and no one would have it otherwise. He found it thus in his time. He
was ever a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. More than all
others had he suffered. It was his glory to be despised and rejected
of men. For the greater the abasement the greater the exaltation in
the land beyond the river." So day by day they walked in the hardest
part of the road. But they spoke often together of a land of pure
delight, of sweet fields beyond the swelling floods, and of turf soft
as velvet that rose from the river's bank.

If perchance on the way they came to green pastures, they would hasten
on, lest they should be tempted to rest before the day of rest was
come. From sweet springs they turned aside, that theirs might be the
greater satisfaction when they came to the sweetest springs of all.
They shut their eyes to beauty and their ears to music, that the light
and music of the unknown shore might burst upon them as a sudden
revelation. They looked not at the stars, lest perchance these should
declare a glory which was reserved for other days. Dreary and harsh
was the way they trod. But in its very dreariness they found safety.
They sought no pleasure, they fought no battles, they wasted no time.
In the pushing aside of all temptation, the scorn of all beauty and
idleness, they found delight. Against the strength of granite rock
they set the force of iron will. Withal, at the bottom their hearts
were light with the certainty of coming joy. Even the multitude of
conflicting paths gave them a peculiar satisfaction; for whatever way
they took was always the right way.

But there were some among them who lost all heart. And they threw
their charts away and set forth in disorder through the forest and up
the mountain. Some of them came safely to the river, far in advance of
the bands they had left behind. But to most the way was strange, and
harder than of old. And as the journey wore on they began to hate the
forest and all its ways.

So they fared on, together or apart, in ever-deepening shadow. They
distrusted their neighbors. They despised the joyous bands who trooped
after their leaders with mouthing of verses and waving of flags. They
were stirred by the sound of no trumpet. They were deceived by no
illusion of sunshine or of mist. They said: "We know the forest; no
one knows it but ourselves. There is no