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Some few feet up the cliff was a little thicket of withered thorns The air was chilly and the cleft was growing very black Why should not he athered some armfuls and heaped them in a space of dry sand They were a little wet, so they burned sloith a great sht wind blew behind hiht in his pockets; and then he lit his pipe How oddly the tobacco tasted in this h excitement! It was as if the essence of all the pipes he had ever smoked was concentrated into this last one The srance he seemed to feel the smell of peat and heather, of drenched hoht wood fire and the hts were ht wind cooled his brow, and he looked into the dark gap and saw his own past

The first picture was a cold place on a loestern island Snoas drifting sparsely, and a dull grey Atlantic sas gru the withered rushes, where seaweed and shells had been blown, and snow lay in dirty patches He felt the thick collar of his shooting-coat tight about his neck, while the Decelish, was lying at his right hand, and far out at sea a string of squattering geese were slowly drifting shorewards with the wind He saw the scene clear in every line, and he remembered the moment as if it had been yesterday, It had been one of his periods of great exultation He had just left Oxford, and had fled northward after some weeks in Paris to wash out the taste of civilization froreat day a with a stalk after wild geese He was furiously hungry, chilled and soaked to the bone, but riotously happy His future seeht past, a tih achievement, bold work, and yet no surcease of pleasure He had been , his soul clear, hishis hands

And then the scene changed to a June evening in his own countryside He was deep in the very heart of the hills beside a little loch, whose clear waves lapped on beaches ofof soft winds was around hiood scents of dusk a thyme and heather He had fished all the afternoon, and his catch lay on the bent beside hiht in his plaid, and already a fire of heather-roots behind him was prepared for supper He had been for a swim, and his hair was still wet on his forehead Just across a conical hill rose into the golden air, the highest hill in all the countryside, but here but a little thing, for the loch was as high as many a hill-top Just on its face was a scaur, and there a raven--a speck--heeling slowly A, and trout in a bay were splashing ide circles The whole place had seeold and cri shades and scents and voices And yet it was no wild spectacle; it was the delicate colorious holiday, the world a garden of the gods There was his home across the hills, with its cool chaardens and memories There were his friends up and down the earth There was the earth itself waiting for his conquest And, meantime, there was this airy land around him, his own by the earliest form of occupation