“As they refuse their neighbours ground to stand upon,” he said to himself, “as the very cubic space they cannot disrobe them of they begrudge them because it measures from what they count their land, I should like to know how high their possession goes! Is there any law that lays that down? To what point above him can the landowner complain of trespass in the gliding or hovering balloon? When hawking comes in again, as it will one day, by the law of revival, at what height will another man's falcon be an intruder on him who stands gazing up from his corn? Were I a power in the universe, I would cram the air over the heads of such incarnate greeds with clouds of souls! The sun should reach them only through the vapours of other life than theirs, inimical to them because of their selfishness. I would set the dead burrowing beneath them, so that the land they boast should heave under their feet with the writhing of the bodies they drove from the surface into the deeps. They should have but a carpet, wallowing in the waves of a continuous live earthquake. I know I am thinking like a fool; but surely at least there ought to be some set season for Truth and Justice to return to the forsaken earth! Are we for ever to bear without hope the presence of the cruel, the vulgar self-souled, the neighbour-crushing rich? Are the wicked the favourites of Nature, that they flourish like a green bay-tree? Doubtless it is right to forgive--but how to be able? Nobody has ever done me any harm yet; I have nothing to complain of; it cannot be revenge in me that longs for something, call it God, or Nature, or Justice, that will repay!--God it cannot be; but something sure there must be to which vengeance belongs!” He might have gone further in his thinking, and perhaps come to ask what satisfaction there could be in any vengeance, so long as the evil-doer remained unhumbled by the perception and the shame of his doing, was neither sorry for it nor turned away from it--in a word, did not repent; but there came an interruption. He was walking slowly along, unheeding where he went, when he heard a sound that made him look up. Then he saw that he was under a great beech, and the sound seemed to come from somewhere in the top of it--a sound like the pleased cooing of a dove. He looked hard into the branches and their wilderness of fresh leaves, but could descry nothing. Then came a little laugh, and with a preparatory rustling and rustling in its passage, a book--a small folio--fell plump at his feet. “Will you please put it in the library!” said a voice he had heard before--long before, it seemed--but had not forgotten. “I will bring it to you--at least I would, if I could see where you are!” answered Richard, gazing with yet keener search into the thick mass of leaf-cloud over his head.