thus presented. He began to understand that things were required of
him. He had met some of these requirements before, and had satisfied
them, but without knowing them as requirements. He did it half awake,
not as a thinking and willing source of the motion demanded. He did it
all by impulse, hardly by response. Now we are put into bodies, and
sent into the world, to wake us up. We might go on dreaming for ages
if we were left without bodies that the wind could blow upon, that the
rain could wet, and the sun scorch, bodies to feel thirst and cold and
hunger and wounds and weariness. The eternal plan was beginning to
tell upon Clare. He was in process of being changed from a dreamer to
a man. It is a good thing to be a dreamer, but it is a bad thing
indeed to be _only_ a dreamer. He began to see that everybody in the
world had to do something in order to get food; that he had worked for
the farmer and his wife, and they had fed him. He had worked willingly
and eaten gladly, but had not before put the two together. He saw now
that men who would be men must work.

His eyes fell upon a congregation of rooks in a field by the
roadside. "Are _they_ working?" he thought; "or are they stealing? If
it be stealing they are at, it looks like hard work as well. It can't
be stealing though; they were made to live, and _how_ are they to live
if they don't grub? that's their work! Still the corn ain't theirs!
Perhaps it's only worms they take! Are the worms theirs? A man should
die rather than steal, papa said. But, if they are stealing, the crows
don't know it; and if they don't know it, they ain't thieves! Is that
it?"

The same instant came the report of a gun. A crowd of rooks rose
cawing. One of them dropped and lay.