Out of the forest the south wind crept, and he seemed a little excited as he saw the dead girl lying there. “I’ll never do it again,” he swore; “if they want such things done, they must do them themselves. Curse them!” Then he howled, for his masters had overheard him and chastised him. He went back to the forest, and brooded all day over what had happened. And that night he went mad, and came forth to do one or two things on his own account. There was the tall poppy growing by the head of the dead girl, and it had become crimson. The south wind gave one puff, and blew it out of the ground into the sea. And over the child’s body it blew the finest white sand that it could find, until a heavy drift lay over it. And it went away to a lonely place where a solitary tree was standing, and in the tree sat the white bird in her nest. And he blew down the tree, and broke the nest, and chased the bird for days and days over the water, till at last the bird sank. And still the wind was not satisfied. He had a faint idea that he had not been doing much good. He ought, by rights, to have killed his masters. He knew that, but his masters could not be killed. How they smiled as they sat up in cloudland, and watched their angry servant snarling over a child, a bird, and a flower! “He’s not satisfied,” said the first. “Very few people are,” grunted a second. “You’re right there,” snorted a third. Their conversation rarely rose above the intellectual level of a market ordinary; but they had the power, and could afford to be a little dull at times. VII. ON CAUSES; WITH AN EXCURSION ON LUCK. I have just been lunching with a man. He is either a Socialist or a Vegetarian--I forget which. On second thoughts, he cannot have been a Vegetarian, because he ate cutlets. He may have been a Philatelist; but I doubt it, and I do not fancy that it really matters. He was something--one of those things that make a man want to lead a higher life, and collar most of the conversation. He told me a good deal about it, and I know that at the time I thought it was a fine thing and an interesting thing; and I wondered why more of us did not do it; and yet I’ve forgotten what it was. The main point, however, is not what he was, but the fact that he was something. He had a Cause, an Enthusiasm; something that lifted him above the common ruck, something he could brag about, something that made it necessary for him to fill up papers, and sign declarations, and feel as if the nation had purchased him at his own price.