He had his reward in an immediate and simple tranquillity of spirit. He never doubted nor looked back. Those who saw him, and thought regretfully what he might have been, what he might have done, would sometimes give utterance to their disappointment, and even peevishly blame him. But here again his coldness of temperament assisted him. He submitted to such criticisms and censures with a regretful air, as though he were half convinced of their truth. But the severer and sterner spirit within was never touched or affected. Ambitious and fond of display as he had been, the loss of dignity and influence weighed nothing with him; he was even surprised to find how little it touched him with any sense of regret or yearning. His fear had been once that perhaps he was great, and that indolence and luxuriousness alone held him back from exercising that greatness. But God had been good to him in neither humiliating nor exposing him, and now that he himself had lifted the lid of the ark in the innermost shrine, and had seen how bare and unfurnished it was, he saw in a flash of humble insight how wisely he was held back. Truth, however painful, has always something bracing and sustaining about it; and the days in which Hugh learnt the truth about himself had nothing of gloom or sadness about them. The discovery indeed surprised him with a certain lightness and freshness of spirit. He smiled to think that he had entered the vale of humiliation, and had found it full of greenness and musical with fountains. A great flood of peace flowed in upon him; and all the delicate love of nature, of trees and skies, of flowers and moving water, came back to him with an increased and deep significance. Before, he had seen their outward appearance; now he looked into their spirit; and so he passed along the dreary valley light of foot and singing to himself. Mr. Fearing, in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, went down from the House Beautiful into the valley, said Mr. Greatheart, "as well as ever I saw man in my life. I never saw him better in all his pilgrimage than when he was in that valley. Here he would lie down, embrace the ground, and kiss the very flowers that grew in the valley. He would now be up every morning by break of day tracing and walking to and fro in this valley." Even so was it with Hugh. The place that he had feared was revealed to him in a moment as his native air. Men do not lose all of a sudden their temptations, and least of all those who have desired the prize rather than the labour. But Hugh saw that the place where he set his feet was holy. And as for his poor desires, he put them in the hands of his Father, and rejoiced to find that they were faithfully and serenely purged away.