It was on a solitary ramble one day, outside of the place of delight, that I came nearer to one of these people than I ever did at any other time.  I had wandered off into a pleasant place of grassy glades with little thorn-thickets everywhere.  I went up a small eminence, which commanded a view of the beautiful plain with its blue distance and the enamelled green foreground of close-grown coverts.  There I sat for a long time lost in pleasant thought and wonder, when I saw a man drawing near, walking slowly and looking about him with a serene and delighted air.  He passed not far from me, and observing me, waved a hand of welcome, came up the slope, and greeting me in a friendly and open manner, asked if he might sit with me for a little.

“This is a pleasant place,” he said, “and you seem very agreeably occupied.”

“Yes,” I said, looking into his smiling face, “one has no engagements here, and no need of business to fill the time—­but indeed I am not sure that I am busy enough.”  As I spoke I was regarding him with some curiosity.  He was a man of mature age, with a strong, firm-featured face, healthy and sunburnt of aspect, and he was dressed, not as I was for ease and repose, but with the garments of a traveller.  His hat, which was large and of some soft grey cloth, was pushed to his back, and hung there by a cord round his neck.  His hair was a little grizzled, and lay close-curled to his head; in his strong and muscular hand he carried a stick.  He smiled again at my words, and said: 

“Oh, one need not trouble about being busy until the time comes; that is a feeling one inherits from the life of earth, and I am sure you have not left it long.  You have a very fresh air about you, as if you had rested, and rested well.”

“Yes, I have rested,” I said; “but though I am content enough, there is something unquiet in me, I am afraid!”

“Ah!” he said, “there is that in all of us, and it would not be well with us if there were not.  Will you tell me a little about yourself?  That is one of the pleasures of this life here, that we have no need to be cautious, or to fear that we shall give ourselves away.”

I told him my adventures, and he listened with serious attention.

“Ah, that is all very good,” he said at last, “but you must not be in any hurry; it is a great thing that ideas should dawn upon us gradually—­one gets the full truth of them so.  It was the hurry of life which was so bewildering—­the shocks, the surprises, the ugly reflections of one’s conduct that one saw in other lives—­the corners one had to turn.  Things, indeed, come suddenly even here, but one is led up to them gently enough; allowed to enter the sea for oneself, not soused and ducked in it.  You will need all the strength you can store up for what is before you, and I can see in your face that you are storing up strength—­but the weariness is not quite gone out of your mind.”

He was silent for a little, musing, till I said, “Will you not tell me some of your own adventures?  I am sure from your look that you have them; and you are a pilgrim, it seems.  Where are you bound?”