not long for this world. He knew what they were saying, and it only
served to increase his misery and fear, and made him hate them because
they were insensible to the awful fact that death awaited them, or so
little concerned that they had never taken the trouble to inform him of
it. To eat and drink and sleep was all they cared for, and they regarded
death with indifference, because their dull sight did not recognize the
beauty and glory of the earth, nor their dull hearts respond to Nature's
everlasting gladness. The sight of the villagers, with their solemn
head-shakings and whisperings, even of his nearest kindred, grew
insupportable, and he at length disappeared from among them, and was
seen no more with his white, terror-stricken face. From that time he hid
himself in the close thickets, supporting his miserable existence on
wild fruits and leaves, and spending many hours each day lying in some
sheltered spot, gazing up into that blue sunny sky, which was his to
gaze on only for a season, while the large tears gathered in his eyes
and rolled unheeded down his wasted cheeks.

At length during this period there occurred an event which is the
obscurest part of his history; for I know not who or what it was--my
mind being in a mist about it--that came to or accidentally found him
lying on a bed of grass and dried leaves in his thorny hiding-place. It
may have been a gipsy or a witch--there were witches in those days--who,
suddenly looking on his upturned face and seeing the hunger in his
unfathomable eyes, loved him, in spite of her malignant nature; or a
spirit out of the earth; or only a very wise man, an ancient,
white-haired solitary, whose life had been spent in finding out the
secrets of nature. This being, becoming acquainted with the cause of the
boy's grief and of his solitary, miserable condition, began to comfort
him by telling him that no grief was incurable, no desire that heart
could conceive unattainable. He discoursed of the hidden potent