Fields lay on one side and stretched in a parti-coloured patterning over the slope before them as they leant upon the wall. The breeze, too, seemed not to stir there, as though the pearly greyness that seemed to tinge the very air were a blight that lay on sound and motion as well as sight. No breath stirred strong enough to lift the petals of the gorse-blossoms by the wall, or rustle the wayside plants. The only movement came from a field of long grass on the slope--one of the pattern of fields, newly-ploughed, short-turfed, or misted with green from the three-weeks-old corn springing a few inches high, a pattern that lay like a coverlet drawn over the rounded flank of the hill. And over that one field movement was busy--the rank grass was exactly the length, density, texture, to respond to what imperceptible breath there was, and that grass only. Over and over it passed the silvery waves made by the bending of the blades, over and over, always rippling up the slope till it looked as though a film of smoke were perpetually being blown from below to vanish over the crest. Ripple after ripple, ripple after ripple, shivered up the slope and was gone--the field shuddered and breathed with it; there was something uncanny about this silent unceasing movement in the dead landscape--this visible effect of an invisible thing. "We're most of us too full of effort," said the Parson abruptly; "we think too much of trying to be good, of whether what we are going to do is right or wrong. Whereas if we only got our minds into the right attitude the rest would follow naturally and be worth all the striving. If we could only be more flower-like--let ourselves grow and blossom. Look at that field, the only thing moving; d'you see it? Well, it's rippling like that all by itself because it's the only thing able to answer to the little breath that's abroad. If you get yourself sound and right and don't worry about yourself, then you respond to the breath of the Spirit, like that grass. For the wind bloweth where it listeth...." He fell into a silence, and Ishmael, stirred out of the crust of depression which had held him so many days, felt all his heart and high hopes, his eagerness for life and its possibilities, stirring within him again. He drew a deep breath and stretched widely, sloughing off mental sloth in the physical act as young things can. He felt more alive because more conscious of himself and his surroundings than ever before, eager and ready to take up the remainder of his time at St. Renny. He stirred a little by the Parson's side. Boase brought his thought to an ending with the rest of the quotation: "So is everyone that is born of the Spirit...." BOOK II GROWTH CHAPTER I A FAMILY ALBUM