"Why? Because I'll be another man then. I'll have forgotten all that I now remember from sunrise to sundown. Can you think what it is to break a hope in your heart each time you crack a stone on the roadside? That's what I am, a stone-breaker, an' I crack stones inside as well as outside. It's a stony place my heart, God knows." "You are young to speak like that, and you speak like a man who has known better days." "Oh, I'm ancient enough," said the man, with a short laugh. "What meaning does that have?" "What meaning? Well, it just means this, that I'm as old as the Bible. For there's mention o' me there. Only there I'm herding swine, an' here I'm breaking stones." "And is _your_ father living?" "Ay, he curses me o' Sabbaths." "Then it's not the same as the old story that is in the Bible?" "Oh, nothing's the same an' everything's the same--except when you're drunk, an' then it's only the same turned outside in. But see, yonder's the farm. Take my advice, an' drink. It's better than the fireside, it's better than food, it's better than kisses, ay it's better than love, it's as good as hate, an' it's the only thing you can drown in except despair." Soon after this the Body entered the house of the Beann Marsanta Macdonald, and with laughter and delight met Morag Cameron, and others whom his heart leaped to see. At midnight, the Will sat in a room in a little inn, and read out of two books, now out of one, now out of the other. The one was the Gaelic Bible, the other was in English and was called _The One Hope_. He rose, as the village clock struck twelve, and went to the window. A salt breath, pungent with tide-stranded seaweed, reached him. In the little harbour, thin shadowy masts ascended like smoke and melted. A green lantern swung from one. The howling of a dog rose and fell. A faint lapping of water was audible. On a big fishing-coble some men were laughing and cursing. Overhead was an oppressive solemnity. The myriad stars were as the incalculable notes of a stilled music, become visible in silence. It was a relief to look into unlighted deeps. "These idle lances of God pierce the mind, slay the spirit," the Will murmured, staring with dull anger at the white multitude. "If the Soul were here," he added bitterly, "he would look at these glittering mockeries as though they were harbingers of eternal hope. To me they are whited sepulchres. They say _we live_, to those who die; they say _God endures,_ to Man that perisheth; they whisper the Immortal Hope to Mortality." Turning, he went back to where he had left the books. He lifted one, and read:-- "_Have we not the word of God Himself that Time and Chance happeneth to all: that soon or late we shall all be caught in a net, we whom Chance hath for his idle sport, and upon whom Time trampleth with impatient feet? Verily, the rainbow is not more frail, more fleeting, than this drear audacity._"