BIRDS IN A VILLAGE. 
41 
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 un- 
fathomable 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 dis- 
coursed of the hidden potent properties of nature, 
unknown only to those who seek not to know 
them, of the splendid virtue inherent in all things, 
like the green and violet flames in the clear 
colourless raindrops which are seen only on rare 
occasions. Of life and death, he said that life was 
of the spirit which never dies, that death meant 
only a passage, a change of abode of the spirit, and 
the left body crumbled to dust when the spirit 
went out of it to continue its existence elsewhere, 
but that those who hated the thought of such 
change could, by taking thought, prolong life and 
live for a thousand years, like the adder and 
tortoise, or for ever. But no, he would not leave 
the poor boy to grope alone and blindly after that 
