part under the long shadow of the hills, but is away at sea or in
service. There is a beautiful seemliness in the extreme youth of
the priest who serves these aged children of God. He bends to
communicate them with the reverent tenderness of a son, and reads
with the careful intonation of far-seeing love. To the old people
he is the son of their old age, God-sent to guide their tottering
footsteps along the highway of foolish wayfarers; and he, with his
youth and strength, wishes no better task. Service ended, we greet
each other friendly--for men should not be strange in the acre of
God; and I pass through the little hamlet and out and up on the
grey down beyond. Here, at the last gate, I pause for breakfast;
and then up and on with quickening pulse, and evergreen memory of
the weary war-worn Greeks who broke rank to greet the great blue
Mother-way that led to home. I stand on the summit hatless, the
wind in my hair, the smack of salt on my cheek, all round me
rolling stretches of cloud-shadowed down, no sound but the shrill
mourn of the peewit and the gathering of the sea.

The hours pass, the shadows lengthen, the sheep-bells clang; and I
lie in my niche under the stunted hawthorn watching the to and fro
of the sea, and AEolus shepherding his white sheep across the blue.
I love the sea with its impenetrable fathoms, its wash and
undertow, and rasp of shingle sucked anew. I love it for its
secret dead in the Caverns of Peace, of which account must be given
when the books are opened and earth and heaven have fled away. Yet
in my love there is a paradox, for as I watch the restless,
ineffective waves I think of the measureless, reflective depths of
the still and silent Sea of Glass, of the dead, small and great,
rich or poor, with the works which follow them, and of the Voice as
the voice of many waters, when the multitude of one mind rends