certain loss of interest, or rather a diversion of interest in
another direction. He spoke of himself with an impersonal
candour.

"Preachers must be always trying to persuade men," he
said. "But what I care about is to know men. I don't care
what they do. Certainly I have no wish to interfere with them
in their doings, for I doubt whether anyone can really change
them. Each tree bears its own fruit, you see, and by their
fruits you know them."

"What do you say to grafting? That changes the fruit,
surely?"

"Yes, but a grafted tree is not really one tree. It is
two trees growing together. There is a double life in it, and
the second life, the added life, dominates the other. The
stock becomes a kind of animate soil for the graft to grow
in."

Presently the road dipped into a little valley and rose
again, breasting the slope of a wooded hill which thrust
itself out from the steeper flank of the mountain-range. Down
the hill-side a song floated to meet us--that most noble lyric of
old Robert Herrick:

Bid me to live, and I will live
Thy Protestant to be;
Or bid me love, and I will give
A loving heart to thee.