THE HERMIT.
The Hermit.
SORROW wanted to rest, so one hot midsummer's day she climbed lightly into the high mountains, amid the ancient forests, high, high up, into the region of quiet, solemn solitude. Only here and there a streamlet trickled, or a dry branch that lay upon the thick moss broke under her footsteps. From time to time the leaves swayed, as though the trees breathed; then a sunbeam would creep through and slide across the fallen mossy giant trunks upon which younger life was disporting; little firs and beeches, strawberries and ants in dense confusion. Of a sudden there was an opening, and Sorrow found herself stepping upon a narrow path, beneath towering rocks, at her feet a yawning precipice. After a while the space grew a little wider, and she came to a tiny house attached to the rock like to an eagle's eyrie. Beside it, in a niche cut in the living rock, sat a man with long white beard, leaning on his stick, and staring with somber dark eyes down into the valleys that opened out from all sides.
As far as the eye could reach there was only mountain and forest. Two eagles hovered almost immovable in the trembling summer air, and then flew after each other in slow circles.