shot the hawk, and it fell perchance into a stream, and was carried down into the sea; and when its body decayed, the little grain sank through the water, and was mingled with the mud at the bottom of the sea.  But do its wanderings stop there?  Not so, my child.  Nothing upon this earth, as I told you once before, continues in one stay.  That grain of mineral might stay at the bottom of the sea a thousand or ten thousand years, and yet the time would come when Madam How would set to work on it again.  Slowly, perhaps, she would sink that mud so deep, and cover it up with so many fresh beds of mud, or sand, or lime, that under the heavy weight, and perhaps, too, under the heat of the inside of the earth, that Mud would slowly change to hard Slate Rock; and ages after, it may be, Madam How might melt that Slate Rock once more, and blast it out; and then through the mouth of a volcano the little grain of mineral might rise into the open air again to make fresh soil, as it had done thousands of years before.  For Madam How can manufacture many different things out of the same materials.  She may have so wrought with that grain of mineral, that she may have formed it into part of a precious stone, and men may dig it out of the rock, or pick it up in the river-bed, and polish it, and set it, and wear it.  Think of that—­that in the jewels which your mother or your sisters wear, or in your father’s signet ring, there may be atoms which were part of a live plant, or a live animal, millions of years ago, and may be parts of a live plant or a live animal millions of years hence.

Think over again, and learn by heart, the links of this endless chain of change:  Fire turned into Stone—­Stone into Soil—­Soil into Plant—­Plant into Animal—­Animal into Soil—­Soil into Stone—­Stone into Fire again—­and then Fire into Stone again, and the old thing run round once more.

So it is, and so it must be.  For all things which are born in Time must change in Time, and die in Time, till that Last Day of this our little earth, in which,

   “Like to the baseless fabric of a vision,
   The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,
   The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
   Yea, all things which inherit, shall dissolve,
   And, like an unsubstantial pageant faded,
   Leave not a rack behind.”

So all things change and die, and so your body too must change and die—­but not yourself.  Madam How made your body; and she must unmake it again, as she unmakes all her works in Time and Space; but you, child, your Soul, and Life, and Self, she did not make; and over you she has no power.  For you were not, like your body, created in Time and Space; and you will endure though Time and Space should be no more:  because you are the child of the Living God, who gives to each thing its own body, and can give you another body, even as seems good to Him.

CHAPTER V—­THE ICE-PLOUGH