“Who’d a thought it!—­who’d ‘a thought it!  Yet mebbe I’m wrong—­an’ mebbe I’m right!—­for the look o’ love never lightens a man’s eyes like that but once in his life—­all the rest o’ the sparkles is only imitations o’ the real fire.  The real fire burns once, an’ only once—­an’ it’s fierce an’ hot when it kindles up in a man after the days o’ his youth are gone!  An’ if the real fire worn’t in Passon’s eyes when he talked o’ the lady-love, than I’m an old idgit wot never felt my heart go dunt again my side in courtin’ time!”

Walden meanwhile went on his round of visits, and presently,—­the circle of his poorer parishioners being completed,-he decided to call on Julian Adderley at his ‘cottage in the wood’ and tell him also of his intended absence.  He had taken rather a liking to this eccentric off-shoot of an eccentric literary set,—­he had found that despite some slight surface affectations, Julian had very straight principles, and loyal ideas of friendship, and that he was not without a certain poetic talent which, if he studied hard and to serious purpose, might develop into something of more or less worthiness.  Some lines that he had recently written and read aloud to Walden, had a haunting ring which clung to the memory: 

     Art thou afraid to live, my Heart? 
     Look round and see
     What life at its best,
     With its strange unrest,
     Can mean for thee! 
     Ceaseless sorrow and toil,
     Waits for each son of the soil;
     And the highest work seems ever unpaid
     By God and man,
     In the mystic plan;—­
     Think of it!  Art thou afraid?

    Art thou afraid to love, my Heart? 
     Look well and see
     If any sweet thing,
     That can sigh or sing,
     Hath need of thee! 
     Of Love cometh wild desire,
     Hungry and fierce as fire,
     In the souls of man and maid,—­
     But the fulness thereof
     Is the end of love,—­
     Think of it!  Art thou afraid?

    Art thou afraid of Death, my Heart? 
     Look down and see
     What the corpse on the bed,
     So lately dead,
     Can teach to thee! 
     Is it the close of the strife,
     Or a new beginning of Life? 
     The secret is not betrayed;—­
     But Darkness makes clear
     That Light must be near! 
     Think of it!  Art thou afraid?

“’Darkness makes clear, that Light must be near,’—­I am sure that is true!”—­murmured John, as he swung along at a quick pace through a green lane leading out of the village into the wider country, where two or three quaint little houses with thatched roofs were nestled among the fields, looking like dropped acorns in the green,—­“It must be true,—­there are so many old saws and sayings of the same kind, like ‘The darkest hour’s before the dawn.’  But why should I seek to console myself with a kind of Tupper ’proverbial philosophy’?  I have no black hour threatening me,—­I have nothing in the world to complain of or grumble at except my own undisciplined nature, which even at my age shows me it can ‘kick against the pricks’ and make a fool of me!”