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cool and bright, where every door stood open, and he could see sheer above him as he mounted the winding way the groups of men and women in the houses, and many faces at the windows looking out, as if on the watch for some one who was coming. Were any of them looking out for him he wondered to himself? without any sense that it was unlikely there should be watchers looking for him in a place where he had never been before, in an unknown country which was strange to all his previous knowledge.

But no restraining consciousness like this was on him as he hastened up the steep way, and suddenly turning round the corner of the wall, which was wreathed with blossoming plants in a glow of colour and fragrance, came in sight of the wide and noble gateway all open, with its pillars glowing in the westering light, and no sign of bolt or bar or other hindrance to shut out any wayfarer. In front of it stood a group of figures, which seemed to be on the watch for some one. Did they expect some prince or lordly visitor? were they the warders of the gate? They stood two and two, beautiful in the first glow of youth, their fair, tall, elastic forms clothed in white, with the faint difference which at that lovely age is all that seems to exist between the maiden and the youth. They were like each other as brothers might be, and the traveller felt suddenly with a strange bound of his heart that he knew these faces, though not whom they belonged to, nor who they were. They were as the faces of others whom he had known in the land that was so far off behind him and all at once he knew that they were looking for no prince or potentate but for himself, all strange as he was, unacquainted

with this place, and with all that was here.

They stood looking far along the valley from that height, and asking each other, "Do you see him? do you see him?" but they did not seem to be aware that he was there, standing close to them, looking at them with eager eyes. He stood silent for a moment, thinking they must perceive him, yet wondering how they would know him, having never seen him before but soon became impatient and troubled by that pause, and, vexed to be overlooked, said suddenly, "I am here-if perhaps you are looking for me."

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They were startled, and turned their faces towards him, but with that strange wistful look as if they saw him not which he had remarked in the people whom he met by the bridge and then they came hastily forward and surrounded him as if with an angelic guard, and he saw with a strange tremor that tears had come into their eyes. "Oh our brother!" said one, in a voice so full of pity that it seemed to him that he pitied himself, though he knew not why, in sympathy. And "Speak," said the others, "speak, that we may know you." While, "Oh my brother," cried the first again, "it is not thus we hoped to see you." This voice seemed to pierce into his inmost heart, and sadness came over him as if his hope had fallen away from him, and this after all was not his home.

"This is who I am," he said; and he told them his name, and that he had come from afar off, and had come straight here without a pause, thinking that this was his home.

They surrounded him closely, as closely as if they would embrace him, and said to him, but with tears, one speaking with another,

"It is your home and we are your brothers and your sisters, and we have known you were coming, but hoped that you would come otherwise. But we love you not the less, oh our brother, our brother! we love you none the less-God save you! God bless you! There is no one here that does not love you and bless you and pray for you. Dear brother, son of our mother! would to God you had but come to us in other wise."

"I cannot tell what you mean," he said, with a trembling coming over him. "If I am your brother, why do you not take me in? I have travelled far to-day, from the very opening of the valley, and never paused - always thinking

that there was home at the endand now you stand between me and the door, and weep, and will not let me in."

"Brother," they said all together, "brother!" It seemed as if in that word lay all sweetness and consolation and pity and love. The circle seemed to open round him, leaving the great wide doorway full of the low sunshine from the west clear before him, and some one came out and stood upon the threshold and stretched out his hands, calling to him, "My son, my son!"

It seemed to the young man that it wanted but a few steps to carry him to the arms of this man who called to him, and to whom his heart went out as if it would burst from his breast. But he that had walked so lightly all day long and felt no weariness, found himself now as one paralysed, incapable of another step. He stood and gazed piteously at the wide open gate, and him who stood there, and knew that this was the place to which he had been travelling, and the home he desired, and the father that he loved. But he

could not make another step. His feet seemed rooted to the ground. There came from him a great outburst of tears and anguish, and he cried to them, "Tell me, tell me! why is it I cannot go?"

The white figures gathered all round him again, as if they would have taken him in their arms, and the first of them spoke, weeping, putting out her hands: "Brother," she said, "those that come here, those that come home, must first be clothed with the building of God, the house not made with hands; those who are unclothed, as you are, alas! they cannot come in. Brother, we have no power, and you have no power. The doors are open, and the hearts are open, and would to God you could come in ; but oh, my brother! what can I say? It is not for us to speak; you know—”

"I know," he said, and stood still among them silent, his heart hushed in his bosom, his head bowed down with trouble, hearing them weeping round him, and well aware that he could not go up, not had he the strength of a giant. He stood awhile, and then he said, "My home was never closed to me before; never have I failed of entrance there and welcome, and my mother's light always burning to guide me. She would have torn me from these stones, and brought me in had she been here. Never, never, was there a question

! And yet," he cried, wildly, "you called that earth, and this you call heaven!" This he cried, not knowing what he said: for never before had there been any thought in his mind what the name of this country

was.

Then his sister called him by his name, and the sound of his name half consoled him, and half made the contrast more bitter, re

minding him of that place from whence he came, where his was the innermost seat and the best welcome, while here he was kept outside. "Do not be so sore discouraged," she said, "for one day you will come and enter at the gate with joy, and nothing will be withheld from you; and we will go to the Great Father and plead with Him, that it may be soon, and then your spirit will be no longer unclothed, and all will be well.

"Unclothed!" he cried; "I know not what you mean," and he turned from them, pushing

them from him, and hurried down the winding way which he had ascended with so light a heart. There were still the faces at the windows looking out; but though he would not look at them, he saw that they were troubled, and many voices sounded out upon the sweet air, calling to him, "God save you! God bless you!" over and over again, till the whole world seemed full of the sound. But he took no heed of it as he fled along the way in indignation and bitter disappointment, saying to himself, "And that was called earth, and this they say is heaven."

At the foot of the hill was a wood encircling its base, with many winding paths going through, and yet here and there masses of shadow from the trees, in which a man might hide himself from every eye, and even from the shining of the daylight, which seemed to the young man in all the glory of the sunset to mock him as he fled away from the place which was his home. It was the dimness and the shadow that attracted him now, and not the glory of the western sky or the daz ling of the light. In the very heart of the wood, kept by a circle of great trees standing all around like a bodyguard, there was a little opening a grassy bank like velvet, all soft with mosses, with little woodland blossoms creeping over the soil, and all the woodland scents and fragrance and sound and silence, far from any sound or sight of men. The young man pushed through the copses and between the great boles of the trees, and flung himself upon the cool and soft and fragrant bank; he flung himself upon his face and hid it there, with a longing to be

II.

rid even of himself and his consciousness in that soft and sheltering shade; but all the while knowing, as he had often discovered before, that however you might cover your eyes, and even burrow in the earth, you could not escape from that most intimate companion, nor shut your ears to his reasonings or his upbraidings. Elsewhere, when one of those moments came, and himself confronted and seized himself, there had always been those at hand who helped him out of this encounter. The crowd, or the tumult and conflict of living, or pleasure, or pain, or some other creature, had stolen in and stopped that conflict. But now was the hour in which there was nothing to intervene.

And at first what was in his mind was nothing but bitter disappointment and rage and shame. He, whose coming back had always been with joy, even when it came with tears, before whom every door had been thrown open, and whom all about him had thanked with wistful looks for coming home: but now he was shut out. This was too great an event, too un

looked for, to permit any other thought beside it. He remembered himself of all the dear stories of his youth, of him whom his father saw afar off and rushed to meet him, not waiting for the confession that was on his lips. And that was how hitherto it had happened to him and here, where he now was, was not this the most mercifullest place of all, where everything was love and forgiveness? He said this to himself, not realising what place it was, not knowing anything, though he had seized upon the name of heaven in his first horror of wonder and upbraiding, to point the bewailing and reproach. For a long time he lay with his hot brow pressed against those soft couches of moss, closing out with his hands the light from his eyes, in a despair and anguish unspeakable-asking himself why he had come here at all, to be rejected and shut out? Why, why had he not taken another path he wot of, and plunged, and goneWhere? where? He caught his sobbing breath, that burst from his bosom like a child's, in heavings and sore reiterations of distress. Where? where? There would have been welcome in that place; and bands of jovial companions, and noise, and shoutings. Where? he did not know where.

But at last this convulsion and passion softened away, and he raised his head and looked himself in the face. Ah, was not this what I said, I said! Was not this what we thought upon many a morning, to forget it ere the night? Was not this what we knew, you and I? but you would not listen or hear. When we saw the mother's light in the window, when the door was thrown open, wide open, did not we know that the time would come- - ? This was what his other self said in his He leaned his head upon his

ear.

hands and looked out in the sweetness of the darkening shade, with fixed eyes that saw nothing except the past, which gripped his heart and stayed his breath and came back upon him in dreadful waves of recollection and consciousness. He saw scenes which he had scorned when he was in them, and loathed, and gone back to, and wallowed, foaming-always with rage and shame of himself. And they had cost him already his other life, and pangs innumerable; the price which he had paid for nought, hard blood-money for that which was no bread-which he had known to be no bread even while he consumed it-the husks which the swine did eat. That was how the other man had named it, the man whom his father ran to meet and fell on his neck - but not here. There had been to himself also those who fell upon his neck and forgave him before he said a word-but not here.

This was not how he had felt when he set out this morning upon the beautiful way in the sunshine. He had been sure then that all was well every evil thought had departed out of his mind; his heart was tender and soft, loving God and man, and the thought of a life in which there should be no reproach, no shadow, no evil, had been sweet to him as is the ex

quisite relief that comes after pain. He remembered how he had sung songs as he walked, in the ease of his heart. And now! Shut out, a homeless wanderer, unclothed: what was that she said? unclothed: he did not know what she meant; but the rest which he did know was enough— enough and more than enough: he was abandoned, forsaken, the door shut upon him-worse than that, open, but he unable to enter: left to himself to spend the night in the wood-or anywhere, who

cared? - though he himself was blameless now, having done nothing to deserve this doom, having felt his heart so soft and a tenderness which was more than innocence, a longing for every good in his heart. Oh the other life which he had left! the homely house, the quiet room, the face all smiling weeping, at the door!

"And that they called earth; and this they say is heaven."

He said this aloud, unawaresand suddenly he was answered by another voice, which seemed to be near him, the voice of another man standing somewhere close by, which said, "No, you are mistaken; this is not heaven."

The young man raised his head and looked round him; and the hair rose up upon his head, and a thrill of shrinking and terror went over him, for he saw no one. He looked round him, drawing back against the tree which crowned the bank, and clutching at it in his alarm he was no coward, but where is the man who can be suddenly accosted by a voice while seeing no one, and not be afraid? "I must have dreamed I heard it," he said to himself: but rose up with an impulse of agitation to leave the place in which such delusions could be.

Then he heard the voice again, but this time lower down, and now close to him, as if a man had suddenly sat down beside him upon the bank. "Are you so new?" it said, with a half laugh. "Have you not discovered that you too are invisible, like me?"

"Invisible !" The young man's voice shook with fear and wonder, wavering as if blown out by the wind, though there was no wind.

"Be consoled," said the other; "it is no bad life: there is no fire nor brimstone here: and there is hope for those who love hope. talk it wiles the hours away."

Let us

While the other spoke, the young man, with a trembling in every limb, held up his hands into the air, and gazed with his eyes, first at one and then at the other-at the places where he felt them, where they ought to be. He felt every nerve thrill and every finger tremble and shake, but he saw nothing. Awe and terror seized upon him. He rushed from the bank, which sloped under his feet and made him look to his footing, and flung himself against the trunk of one of the great trees. He felt the touch of it, the roughness of the bark, the projection of the twigs here and there but at the same time he saw it clear, standing with its feet deep in the fern and undergrowth, and no human body against it-this while he felt still the thrill and shock with which he came in contact with that great substantial thing. And he uttered a great cry, "I am then no more a man!" in a voice which rang shrill with horror and misery and dismay.

"Yes," said the other, "you are still a man. And be consoled. In some things it is better than the old life. You have no wants and no weariness, likewise no work, no responsibility. Be consoled. The discovery is painful for a moment, but you will find companions enough. What has happened to you is no more than has happened to many other men and we have great freedom, and society at our pleasure. There is a future before us, though it may be thousands of years away.

"A future!" cried the young man; "nay, let me die and be done with it. What manner of man are you that can look calmly on a future like this? My God, to live and live and be nothing, as I am now!"

"I am," said the other, "just such a manner of man as you will

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