Strange that
it is the little races who wander farthest and yet have the eternal
home-sickness! And yet not strange, for to the little peoples, their
land, bare and uncouth and unfriendly for the needs of life, must be
more the ideal, the dream, than the satisfaction. The lush countries
give corn and wine for their folks, the little bare places afford no
more than a spiritual heritage. Yet spiritual it is, and for two men
who in the moment of their extremity will think on meadow, woodland, or
placid village, a score will figure the windy hill, the grey lochan, and
the mournful sea.
For the moment he felt a self-pity which he cast from him. To this
degradation at least he should never come. But as the thought of Alice
came up ever and again, his longing for her seemed to be changed from
hot pain to a chastened regret. The red hearth-fire was no more in his
fancy. The hunger for domesticity had gone, and the girl was now less
the wife he had desired than the dream of love he had vainly followed.
As he came back across the moors, for the first time for weeks his
jealous love left him at peace. His had been a fanciful Sylvia, "holy,
fair, and wise"; and what if mortal Sylvia were unkind, there was yet
comfort in this elusive lady of his memories.
He found George at the end of a second breakfast, a very ruddy, happy
young man hunting high and low for a lost tobacco-jar.
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