He gripped the movable boulder and swung it round and I crawled out into the open air. The morning sky above me was fleecy with soft clouds; the air was full of melody; all the feathered world was awake. Thrush vied with blackbird, blackbird with linnet, and linnet with the far off tremulous lark. I stood on the little sandstone platform above the pool filling my lungs with great draughts of morning air. The haunting beauty of the place--the mystical and impenetrable depths of the pool, the tender foliage above me mirrored on its surface, the soft wind of the morning throbbing with melody--all conspired to cast a spell over me. But I woke from my dream as I remembered the stern realities that beset me. Leaning over I filled the bowl and returned with it to the cave. Hector had already laid out the morning meal, but at the moment a desire more urgent than hunger was upon me. So I crawled once more into the open air and, quickly undressing, dived into the pool, and swam round it a dozen times. Greatly refreshed I was about to swing myself out, when I saw the shoulders of Hector protruding from the aperture in the wall. He shook his head and smiled at me, saying: "You gi’ed me a terrible fricht. I heard the splash and thocht ye had fa’en in. Ye’re a queer chiel; ye like cauld water a lot better than I do," and he drew his head back into the cave. *CHAPTER XXXII* *TOILERS OF THE NIGHT* The rest and sleep of the night had done the minister good service; and though he still complained of considerable pain in the head and bore upon it the protuberant evidence of Hector’s skill with his weapon, he was able to join in our conversation. In my absence Hector had told him who we were and what had happened. He had some difficulty in recognising Hector, beardless and lacking his tree-leg, but when the packman had salted his conversation with an apposite quotation from Horace, he had been compelled to admit his identity and had hailed him as an old friend. Hector’s surmise had been correct. The inhabitant of the cave was none other than Mr. Corsane, who, ousted from his charge and compelled to become a wanderer, had made it his headquarters through many a weary month. It was a hiding-place in which he could find shelter alike from the blasts of the storm and from the persecutors. Driven from his manse, his church and his parish, a man with a price upon his head, he did not remain in this cave from week’s end to week’s end, a craven fugitive. Constantly he had ventured out. Did sickness or sorrow visit one of the homes of his little flock, he was instant in succour, ready to bring to them at all times the spiritual help and consolation for which they looked to him. Wherefore, though he was a minister without a charge, he was not a minister without a people.