"Come back again soon, Satyr!" I called. "A supper any time for ten minutes fiddling!"
He waved his hand, but made no reply.
A few moments later, from down the road, growing fainter and fainter, I again heard that fantastic rhyme:
"Rabbit in th' log,
Ain't got no rabbit dog."
CHAPTER EIGHT
IN WHICH I PITCH MY TENT TOWARD HEBRON FOR THE SPACE OF AN AFTERNOON
I have been to Lizard Point.
Before sunrise this morning I was up, and out. I sleep with both windows open and the shutters up, so the first daybeams rouse me. Thereafter I do not attempt to sleep, but rise at once. This is another of 'Crombie's commands. He said the air was fresher and sweeter, and the distillations from the earth and vegetation purer and more efficacious. He said all this would do me good, and I am trying to follow out his wishes to the letter, because life is sweet to me, and I want to get well. (I must say that I never felt more vigorous than I do to-night.) It went hard with me at first—this rising with the lark—for, in common with most bookish folk, it had been my custom to sit up into the small hours, and sleep late the next morning. Now I am growing used to it, and I love it. I find that I feel better; stronger, more active and alert. There must be some tonic properties in the early morning air to affect me in this way.
The world is never so lovely as when she wakes from sleep. Not even when her old tirewoman, the sun, flings her golden coverlet over her just before nightfall, does she appear so bewitchingly beautiful. This morning, for instance, when I stepped without my door, I felt as if I had been transported by magic into some new and mystical land. Like a maiden whose virginal slumbers have been filled with peaceful dreams of her beloved, the earth was waking. Gently—so gently—she pushed the fleecy fog-billows from her breast. Afar the folds of night seemed yet to cling about her, as though loath to leave her form. Nearer, but way up the valley, grayish, shifting mists writhed slowly, uncoiling vaporous lengths before the ever increasing light. Nearhand, trees, bushes and stones showed dew-sweet and clean. And when, at length, the day had triumphed, and I beheld the rim of a gold ball topping the far eastern range, my breast throbbed with a quick elation, and a song burst from my lips.