That old home was the dearest thing on earth to the young man. He had
never been away from it but once, when the conscription called him.
In that time, which had been to him like a nightmare, the time of his
brief exile to the army, because he was the only son of a widow, he
had been sent to a northern city, one of commerce and noise and
crowded, breathless life; he had been cooped up in it like a panther
in a den, like a hawk in a cage. What he saw of the vices and
appetites of men, the pressure of greed and of gain, the harsh and
stupid tyranny of the few, the slavish and ignoble submission of the
many, the brutish bullying, the crouching obedience, the deadly
routine, the lewd licence of reaction--all filled him with disdain
and with disgust. When he returned to his valley he bathed in the
waters of Edera before he crossed his mother's threshold.

"Make me clean as I was when I left you!" he cried, and took the
water in the hollow of his hands and kissed it.

But no water flows on the earth, from land to sea, which can wholly
cleanse the soul as it cleanses the body.

That brief time under arms he cursed as thousands of youths have
cursed it. Its hated stigma and pollution never wholly passed away.
It left a bitterness on his lips, a soil upon his memories. But how
sweet to him beyond expression, on his return, were the sound of the
rushing river in the silence of the night, the pure odours of the
blossoming beanfields, the clear dark sky with its radiant stars, the
sense of home, the peace of his own fields!

"Mother, whether life for me shall be long or short, here its every