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which had fallen from his shoulders, seemed an intolerable
burden of which he had been eased. The religious exercises
which for so many years had been forced upon him were
part and parcel of religion to him. He thought of the collects
and epistles which he had been made to learn by heart, and
the long services at the Cathedral through which he had sat
when every limb itched with the desire for movement; and
he remembered those walks at night through muddy roads
to the parish church at Blackstable, and the coldness of that
bleak building; he sat with his feet like ice, his fingers numb
and heavy, and all around was the sickly odour of pomatum.
Oh, he had been so bored! His heart leaped when he saw he
was free from all that.
He was surprised at himself because he ceased to believe
so easily, and, not knowing that he felt as he did on account
of the subtle workings of his inmost nature, he ascribed the
certainty he had reached to his own cleverness. He was un-
duly pleased with himself. With youth’s lack of sympathy for
an attitude other than its own he despised not a little Weeks
and Hayward because they were content with the vague emo-
tion which they called God and would not take the further
step which to himself seemed so obvious. One day he went
alone up a certain hill so that he might see a view which, he
knew not why, filled him always with wild exhilaration. It
was autumn now, but often the days were cloudless still, and
then the sky seemed to glow with a more splendid light: it
was as though nature consciously sought to put a fuller ve-
hemence into the remaining days of fair weather. He looked
down upon the plain, a-quiver with the sun, stretching vast-

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