original unity out of which some sad fate has cast it--a moment when the
world seems to be one thing and not several things: the stars and the
stream, the odours afloat upon the stream, the bird's song and the words
of Jesus: whosoever admires the stars and flowers finds God in his
heart, seemed to become all blended into one extraordinary harmony; and
unable to resist the emotion of the moment any longer, Joseph threw
himself upon the ground and prayed that the moment he was living in
might not be taken from him, but that it might endure for ever. But
while he prayed, the moment was passing, and becoming suddenly aware
that it had gone, he rose from his knees and returned home mentally
weary and sad at heart; but sitting on his bedside the remembrance that
he was to meet Jesus in the morning at Capernaum called up the ghost of
a departed ecstasy, and his head drowsing upon his pillow he fell
asleep, hushed by remembrances.




CHAP. XII.


A few hours later he was speeding along the lake's edge in the bright
morning, happy as the bird singing in the skies, when the thought like a
dagger-thrust crossed his mind that being the son of a rich man Jesus
could not receive him as a disciple, only the poor were welcome into the
brotherhood of the poor. His father had told him as much, and the beggar
whom he had met under the cliffs, smelling of rags and raw garlic,
expressed the riches of simplicity. Happy, happy evening, for ever gone
by! Happy ignorance already turned into knowledge! For in Peter's house
Jesus would hear that the man whom he had met under the cliffs was the