It was a sweet fresh morning, late in the spring--those loveliest of hours that unite the seasons, like the shimmering question of green or blue in the feathers of a peacock. He had set out an hour before the rest, and now, a little way within the park, was coaxing Kelpie to stand, that he might taste the morning in peace. The sun was but a few degrees above the horizon, shining with all his heart, and the earth was taking the shine with all hers. “I too am light,” she was saying, “although I can but receive it.” The trees were covered with baby-leaves, half wrapped in their swaddling clothes, and their breath was a warm aromatic odour in the glittering air. The air and the light seemed one, and Malcolm felt as if his soul were breathing the light into its very depths, while his body was drinking the soft spicy wind. For Kelpie, she was as full of life as if she had been meant for a winged horse, but by some accident of nature the wing-cases had never opened, and the wing-life was for ever trying to get out at her feet. The consequent restlessness, where there was plenty of space as here, caused Malcolm no more discomposure than, in his old fishing-days, a gale with plenty of sea-room. And the song of the larks was one with the light and the air. The budding of the trees was their way of singing; but the larks beat them at that. “What a power of joy,” thought Malcolm, “there must be in God, to be able to keep so many larks so full of bliss!” He was going to say--“without getting tired;” but he saw that it was the eternal joy itself that bubbled from their little fountains: weariness there would be the silence of all song, would be death, utter vanishment to the gladness of the universe. The sun would go out like a spark upon burnt paper, and the heart of man would forget the sound of laughter. Then he said to himself: “The larks do not make their own singing; do mortals make their own sighing?” And he saw that at least they might open wider the doors of their hearts to the Perseus Joy that comes to slay the grief-monsters. Then he thought how his life had been widening out with the years. He could not say that it was now more pleasant than it had been; he had Stoicism enough to doubt whether it would ever become so from any mere change of circumstances. Dangers and sufferings that one is able for, are not misfortunes or even hardships--so far from such, that youth delights in them. Indeed he sorely missed the adventure of the herring fishing. Kelpie, however, was as good as a stiff gale. If only all were well with his sister! Then he would go back to Portlossie and have fishing enough. But he must be patient and follow as he was led. At three and twenty, he reflected, Milton was content to seem to himself but a poor creature, and was careful only to be ready for whatever work should hereafter be required of him: such contentment, with such hope and resolve at the back of it, he saw to be the right and the duty both of every man.