“What shall I save but her soul, yea, though her body perish?”

He spoke out in his trouble, and the vision seemed to shrink and waver under his gaze; but the faint voice sighed again,—­or was it only the wind in the pine-trees?—­“Care thou for her earthly life, her earthly joy, for God is mindful of her soul.”

But then the deeper note struck in again,—­or was it only a stronger gust, that bowed the branches, and murmured through all the airy depths above him?

“Keep the faith!  Thou art a man, and wilt thou be drawn away by women, of whom the best are a stumbling-block and a snare for the feet?  Destroy the evil thing! root it out from thy house!  What are joys of this world, that we should think of them?  Do they not lead to destruction, even the flowery path of it, going down to the mouth of the pit, and with no way leading thence?  Who is the woman for whose sake thou wilt lose thine own soul?  If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out!”

So the night went on, and the voices, or the wind, or his own soul, cried, and answered, and cried again:  and no peace came.

The night passed.  As it drew to a close, all sound, all motion, died away; the darkness folded him close, like a mantle; the silence pressed upon him like hands that held him down.  Like a log the man lay at the foot of the great tree, and his soul lay dead within him.

At last a change came; or did he sleep, and dream of a change?  A faint trembling in the air, a faint rustling that lost itself almost before it reached the ear.  It was gone, and all was still once more; yet with a difference.  The darkness lay less heavily:  one felt that it hid many things, instead of filling the world with itself alone.

Hark! the murmur again, not lost this time, but coming and going, lightly, softly, brushing here and there, soft dark wings fanning the air, making it ever lighter, thinner.  Gradually the veil lifted; things stood out, black against black, then black against grey; straight majesty of tree-trunks, bending lines of bough and spray, tender grace of ferns.

And now, what is this?  A sound from the trees themselves,—­no multitudinous murmur this time, but a single note, small and clear and sweet, breaking like a golden arrow of sound through the cloudy depths.

Chirp, twitter! and again from the next tree, and the next, and now from all the trees, short triads, broken snatches, and at last the full chorus of song, choir answering to choir, the morning hymn of the forest.

Now, in the very tree beneath which the man lay, Chrysostom, the thrush, took up his parable, and preached his morning sermon; and if it had been set to words, they might have been something like these:—­