of
our ignorance is hard to bear. Thus we cry, but there comes no answer,
and the eternal silence which enfolds the earth is unbroken. Yet the
stars still shine, promising but not fulfilling.

We have become star-gazers, we irreconcilables; expecters of signs and
wonders. We live upon every ridge of the world, and have made of every
mountain a watch-tower; and from the towers we strain our eyes to see
past the stars.

For the stars are perchance but the flowers in a garden, or the lights
upon the walls of a garden, and beyond them is the palace of our
fathers.

"And since the early days till now," said my companion, "I have
wandered about the world, sometimes sojourning a while in a town, but
seldom for long. For the town is not a good place."

Then I told him how the town had tempted me, and we compared
experiences. We told of the times when we had come nigh forgetting.

"Just think," said I to him, "I should never have found you had I been
swallowed up in the town."

"And I should never have lain at your feet in the sun," he replied.
"You would never have noticed me in the town."

IV. "HOW THE TOWNSMAN TEMPTED ME"

"Once I was tempted by a townsman," said the wanderer, "but instead of
converting me with his town, he was himself converted by the country.

"For many years I wandered by seashores, asking questions of the sea.
When I came to the sea it was singing its melancholy song, the song
that it has sung from its birth, and it paused neither to hear nor to
answer me. Ever rolling, ever breaking, ever weeping, it continued its
indifferent labour. I walked along its far-stretching sands, leaving
footprints which it immediately effaced. I clambered upon its cliffs
and sat looking out to sea for days, my eyes shining like lighthouse
fires. But the sea revealed not itself to me. Or perhaps it had no
self to reveal. And I could not reveal myself to it; but the sea
expressed itself to me as a picture of my mystery.

"I wandered inland to placid lakes, the looking-glasses of the clouds.
I threw pebbles into their waters, disturbing their pure reflections,
but the disturbances passed away harmlessly into nothingness, and the
lakes once more reflected the sky.

"Then I said to my heart, 'We must wander over all the world in search
of my homeland, but chance shall not be my guide. I shall loose the
reins to thee. Where thou leadest I will follow.'

"I followed my heart through verdant valleys up into a mountai