PILGRIMS AT THE LAND'S END 307 



granite hills, with gnarled and buttressed trunks like 

 vast towers and immense horizontal branches, casting 

 a slight shade over many acres of ground. Onwards 

 and upwards, with eyes downcast, he will slowly take 

 his devious way to the interior, feeling the earth with 

 his staff, in search of a suitable last resting-place. 

 And when he has travelled many, many leagues and 

 has found it a spot not too sunny nor too deeply 

 shaded, where the old fallen dead leaves and dry moss 

 have formed a thick soft couch to recline on and a 

 grey exposed root winding over the earth offers a rest 

 to his back there at length he will settle himself. 

 There he will remain motionless and contented 

 for ever in that remote desert land where is no 

 sound of singing bird nor of running water nor of 

 rain or wind in the grey ancient trees : waking and 

 sleeping he will rest there, dreaming little and think- 

 ing less, while year by year and age by age the 

 memory of the world of passion and striving of 

 which he was so unutterably tired grows fainter 

 and fainter in his mind. And he will have neither 

 joy nor sorrow, nor love nor hate, nor wish to 

 know them any more ; and when he remembers his 

 fellow-men it will comfort him to think that his 

 peace will never be broken by the sight of human 

 face or the sound of human speech, since never by 

 any chance will any wanderer from the world discover 

 him in that illimitable wilderness. 



This may not have been the precise vision of that 

 old man, sitting on a rock with chin resting on his 

 hands ; it is merely my interpretation of his appear- 



