“Ye gods!” said Piers.

He looked at the square, strong figure incredulously.  Somehow he could not associate Crowther with any but a vigorous, outdoor existence.

“You would never have stuck to it,” he said, after a moment.  “You’d have loathed the life.”

“I don’t think so,” said Crowther, in his deliberate way, “though I admit I probably shouldn’t have expanded much.  It wasn’t easy to give it up at the time.”

“What made you do it?” asked Piers.

“Necessity.  When my father died, my mother was left with a large family and quite destitute.  I was the eldest, and a sheep-farming uncle—­a brother of hers—­offered me a wage sufficient to keep her going if I would give up the Church and join him.  I was already studying.  I could have pushed through on my own; but I couldn’t have supported her.  So I had to go.  That was the beginning of my Colonial life.  It was five-and-twenty years ago, and I’ve never been Home since.”

He turned his horse quietly round to continue the ascent.  The road was steep.  They went slowly side by side.

Crowther went on in a grave, detached way, as though he were telling the story of another man’s life.  “I kicked hard at going, but I’ve lived to be thankful that I went.  I had to rough it, and it did me good.  It was just that I wanted.  There’s never much fun for a stranger in a strange land, sonny, and it took me some time to shake down.  In fact just for a while I thought I couldn’t stand it.  The loneliness out there on those acres and acres of grass-land was so awful; for I was city-bred.  I’d never been in the desert, never been out of the sound of church-bells.”  He began to smile again.  “I’d even got a sort of feeling that God wasn’t to be found outside civilization,” he said.  “I think we get ultra-civilized in our ideas sometimes.  And the emptiness was almost overpowering.  It was like being shut down behind bars of iron with occasional glimpses of hell to enliven the monotony.  That was when one went to the townships, and saw life.  They didn’t tempt me at first.  I was too narrow even for that.  But the loneliness went on eating and eating into me till I got so desperate in the end I was ready to snatch at any diversion.”  He paused a moment, and into his steady eyes there came a shadow that made them very human.  “I went to hell,” he said.  “I waded up to the neck in mire.  I gave myself up to it body and soul.  I wallowed.  And all the while it revolted me, though it was so sickeningly easy and attractive.  I loathed myself, but I went on with it.  It seemed anyhow one degree better than that awful homesickness.  And then one day, right in the middle of it all, I had a sort of dream.  Or perhaps it wasn’t any more a dream than Jacob had in the desert.  But I felt as if I’d been called, and I just had to get up and go.  I expect most people know the sensation, for after all the Kingdom of Heaven is within us; but it made a bigger impression on me at the time than anything in my experience.  So I went back into the wilderness and waited.  Old chap, I didn’t wait in vain.”