I had never yet done anything to justify my existence; my former world was nothing the better for my sojourn in it: here, however, I must earn, or in some way find, my bread! But I reasoned that, as I was not to blame in being here, I might expect to be taken care of here as well as there! I had had nothing to do with getting into the world I had just left, and in it I had found myself heir to a large property! If that world, as I now saw, had a claim upon me because I had eaten, and could eat again, upon this world I had a claim because I must eat--when it would in return have a claim on me! “There is no hurry,” said the raven, who stood regarding me; “we do not go much by the clock here. Still, the sooner one begins to do what has to be done, the better! I will take you to my wife.” “Thank you. Let us go!” I answered, and immediately he led the way. CHAPTER V. THE OLD CHURCH I followed him deep into the pine-forest. Neither of us said much while yet the sacred gloom of it closed us round. We came to larger and yet larger trees--older, and more individual, some of them grotesque with age. Then the forest grew thinner. “You see that hawthorn?” said my guide at length, pointing with his beak. I looked where the wood melted away on the edge of an open heath. “I see a gnarled old man, with a great white head,” I answered. “Look again,” he rejoined: “it is a hawthorn.” “It seems indeed an ancient hawthorn; but this is not the season for the hawthorn to blossom!” I objected. “The season for the hawthorn to blossom,” he replied, “is when the hawthorn blossoms. That tree is in the ruins of the church on your home-farm. You were going to give some directions to the bailiff about its churchyard, were you not, the morning of the thunder?” “I was going to tell him I wanted it turned into a wilderness of rose-trees, and that the plough must never come within three yards of it.” “Listen!” said the raven, seeming to hold his breath. I listened, and heard--was it the sighing of a far-off musical wind--or the ghost of a music that had once been glad? Or did I indeed hear anything? “They go there still,” said the raven. “Who goes there? and where do they go?” I asked. “Some of the people who used to pray there, go to the ruins still,” he replied. “But they will not go much longer, I think.” “What makes them go now?” “They need help from each other to get their thinking done, and their feelings hatched, so they talk and sing together; and then, they say, the big thought floats out of their hearts like a great ship out of the river at high water.” “Do they pray as well as sing?” “No; they have found that each can best pray in his own silent heart.--Some people are always at their prayers.--Look! look! There goes one!” He pointed right up into the air. A snow-white pigeon was mounting, with quick and yet quicker wing-flap, the unseen spiral of an ethereal stair. The sunshine flashed quivering from its wings. “I see a pigeon!” I said.