The morning arrived; they finished breakfast; the horses came round and stood at the door--all but Kelpie. The ladies mounted. Ah, what a morning to leave the country and go back to London! The sun shone clear on the dark pine-woods; the birds were radiant in song; all under the trees the ferns were unrolling each its mystery of ever generating life; the soul of the summer was there whose mere idea sends the heart into the eyes, while itself flits mocking from the cage of words. A gracious mystery it was--in the air, in the sun, in the earth, in their own hearts. The lights of heaven mingled and played with the shadows of the earth, which looked like the souls of the trees that had been out wandering all night, and had been overtaken by the sun ere they could re-enter their dark cells. Every motion of the horses under them was like a throb of the heart of the earth, every bound like a sigh of her bliss. Florimel shouted almost like a boy with ecstasy, and Clementina’s moonlight went very near changing into sunlight as she gazed, and breathed, and knew that she was alive. They started without Malcolm, for he must always put his mistress up, and then go back to the stable for Kelpie. In a moment they were in the wood, crossing its shadows. It was like swimming their horses through a sea of shadows. Then came a little stream and the horses splashed it about like children from very gamesomeness. Half a mile more and there was a saw-mill, with a mossy wheel, a pond behind, dappled with sun and shade, a dark rush of water along a brown trough, and the air full of the sweet smell of sawn wood. Clementina had not once looked behind, and did not know whether Malcolm had yet joined them or not. All at once the wild vitality of Kelpie filled the space beside her, and the voice of Malcolm was in her ears. She turned her head. He was looking very solemn. “Will you let me tell you, my lady, what this always makes me think of?” he said. “What in particular do you mean?” returned Clementina coldly. “This smell of new-sawn wood that fills the air, my lady.” She bowed her head. “It makes me think of Jesus in his father’s workshop,” said Malcolm “--how he must have smelled the same sweet scent of the trees of the world broken for the uses of men, that is now so sweet to me. Oh, my lady! it makes the earth very holy and very lovely to think that as we are in the world, so was he in the world. Oh, my lady! think:--if God should be so nearly one with us that it was nothing strange to him thus to visit his people! that we are not the offspring of the soulless tyranny of law that knows not even its own self, but the children of an unfathomable wonder, of which science gathers only the foambells on the shore--children in the house of a living Father, so entirely our Father that he cares even to death that we should understand and love him!”