Ian had not proposed to Mercy that they should walk together; but when the issuing crowd had broken into twos and threes, they found themselves side by side. The company took its way along the ridge, and the road eastward. The night was clear, and like a great sapphire frosted with topazes--reminding Ian that, solid as is the world under our feet, it hangs in the will of God. Mercy and he walked for some time in silence. It was a sudden change from the low barn, the dull candles, and the excitement of the dance, to the awful space, the clear pure far-off lights, and the great stillness. Both felt it, though differently. There was in both of them the quest after peace. It is not the banished demon only that wanders seeking rest, but souls upon souls, and in ever growing numbers. The world and Hades swarm with them. They long after a repose that is not mere cessation of labour: there is a positive, an active rest. Mercy was only beginning to seek it, and that without knowing what it was she needed. Ian sought it in silence with God; she in crepitant intercourse with her kind. Naturally ready to fall into gloom, but healthy enough to avoid it, she would rush at anything to do--not to keep herself from thinking, for she had hardly begun to think, but to escape that heavy sense of non-existence, that weary and restless want which is the only form life can take to the yet unliving, those who have not yet awakened and arisen from the dead. She was a human chicken that had begun to be aware of herself, but had not yet attacked the shell that enclosed her: because it was transparent, and she could see life about her, she did not know that she was in a shell, or that, if she did not put forth the might of her own life, she was sealing herself up, a life in death, in her antenatal coffin. Many who think themselves free have never yet even seen the shell that imprisons them--know nothing of the liberty wherewith the Lord of our life would set them free. Men fight many a phantom when they ought to be chipping at their shells. "Thou art the dreamer!" they cry to him who would wake them. "See how diligent we are to get on in the world! We labour as if we should never go out of it!" What they call the world is but their shell, which is all the time killing the infant Christ that houses with them. Ian looked up to the sky, and breathed a deep breath. Mercy looked up in his face, and saw his strangely beautiful smile. "What are you thinking of, Captain Macruadh?" she said. "I was thinking," he answered, "that perhaps up THERE"--he waved his arm wide over his head--"might be something like room; but I doubt it, I doubt it!" Naturally, Mercy was puzzled. The speech sounded quite mad, and yet he could not be mad, he had danced so well! She took comfort that her father was close behind. "Did you never feel," he resumed, "as if you could not anyhow get room enough?" "No," answered Mercy, "never."