cause, his heart was touched and made more of it. The gentle scraping
continued without intermission as on he walked. What did it say to him?
Human tongue could not have said so much just then.

A pale grey light on the skirts of the flying tempest displayed the dawn.
Richard was walking hurriedly. The green drenched weeds lay all about in
his path, bent thick, and the forest drooped glimmeringly. Impelled as a
man who feels a revelation mounting obscurely to his brain, Richard was
passing one of those little forest-chapels, hung with votive wreaths,
where the peasant halts to kneel and pray. Cold, still, in the twilight
it stood, rain-drops pattering round it. He looked within, and saw the
Virgin holding her Child. He moved by. But not many steps had he gone
ere his strength went out of him, and he shuddered. What was it? He
asked not. He was in other hands. Vivid as lightning the Spirit of Life
illumined him. He felt in his heart the cry of his child, his darling's
touch. With shut eyes he saw them both. They drew him from the depths;
they led him a blind and tottering man. And as they led him he had a
sense of purification so sweet he shuddered again and again.

When he looked out from his trance on the breathing world, the small
birds hopped and chirped: warm fresh sunlight was over all the hills. He
was on the edge of the forest, entering a plain clothed with ripe corn
under a spacious morning sky.




CHAPTER XLIII