“Damnation, salvation, it’s much the same thing,” said Boase, cheerfully, “though naturally youth likes to use the former word.  But the great thing is never to despise the means by which another man attains it.  Patience, tolerance, tolerance, patience....”

“Oh, I don’t know,” protested Ishmael.  “I don’t think much would get done in the world at that rate, would it?”

“Perhaps not.  And you have so much to do in it....  When d’you start?”

“To-morrow morning with dawn, so I must be getting off.  If you’re awake round about then, Da Boase, think of me beginning to remake the world over at Cloom.”

And Ishmael set off through the night, his feet lagging with a blissful fatigue and his mind falling on an equally blissful numbness.  As he went the Parson’s phrase went with him, stirring his imagination, and when he climbed into the big bed beneath the drooping Christ it worked more articulately within him.  “Secret bread ...” he thought; “that’s what he called it....  I wonder if Phoebe’s is sun—­she wanted to pick the sun.  And his is religion, of course, and mine—­I know what mine is.  It’ll always be the same.  I shan’t change even if I grow old.”

He began to feel very drowsy and drifted into a vague wonder at the thought of growing old.  “I wonder what it feels like.  I suppose one takes no more interest in anything; it can’t matter what one’s secret bread is.  But mine, of course, mine is Cloom....”  And on that he fell asleep.

CHAPTER III

FIRST FURROW

Youth is susceptible to that which it awakes, and Ishmael sallied out early next morning in a mood to match the month as it then shone to greet him.  The sun had not long cleared the east, and the globes of dew glimmered on leaf and twig and darkened his boots as he crossed the ill-kept lawn in front of the house.  He promised himself it should be rolled and mown and have flower-beds around it, and that a wind-break of firs should be planted along the low granite wall which was all that divided it from the bare moor.  He went to the little gate and, leaning his back against it, looked long at the house as though for the first time.  He noted the solid simple lines of its long front and the beauty of its heavy mullions and the stone corbels beneath the roof.  The portico over the door had pillars of square rough-hewn granite, a whole room was built out over it, with a wide-silled window, beneath which the Ruan arms were carved on a granite shield.  That door should have a drive leading up and widening before it; at present what cart-track there was went meekly along the side of the low wall into the farmyard.  Those two big velvet-dark yews that stood sentinel either side of the porch would look splendid when clipped taut and square.  So he planned, and then, hearing the voice of John-James calling to the cows, he remembered that the utilitarian side of the place must come first;