This time they were so pleased that they waited a little before they would applaud, but the old Pilot, remembering more strongly than ever the vineyard land, moved his right hand back and forward with delight as in some way he would play music with it, and thus by a communication of heart to heart stirred in that Stranger a new song; and taking up his flute for the third time he blew upon it a different strain, at which some were confused, others hungry in their hearts, though they could not have told you why, but the old Pilot saw great and gracious figures moving over a land subject to blessedness; he saw that in the faces of these figures (which were those of the Immortals) stood present at once a complete satisfaction and a joyous energy and a solution of every ill. “These,” he said to himself in the last passion of the music, “these are true Gods.” But suddenly the music ceased, and with it the vision also.
For the great pleasure which the Flute Player had given them they desired to keep him in their company, and so they did for three full years. That is, the winter long, the seed time, and the time of harvest; and the next harvest also, and another harvest more, during which time he played them many tunes, and learnt their tongue.
Now, his Gods were his own, but he pined for the lack of their worship and for Priests of his own sort, and when he would explain these in his own manner some believed him, but some did not believe him. And to those who believed him he brought a man from the South, from beyond the Dovrefield, who baptised them with water: as for those who would not have this they looked on, and kept to their own decree: but there was as yet no division among them. A little while after the third harvest, hearing that the fleet, which was of twelve boats, would make for Roman land, he begged to go with it, for he was sick for his own, but first he made them take an oath that they would molest none, nor even barter with any, until they had landed him in his own land. The Chief took this oath for them, and though his oath was worth the oath of twelve men, twelve other men swore with him. In this way the oath was done. So they took the Flute Player for three days over the sea before the wind called Eager, which is the north-east wind, and blows at the beginning of the open season; they took him at the beginning of the fourth year since his coming among them, and they landed him in a little boat in a seaport of the Franks, on Roman land....
The Faith went over the world as very light seed goes upon the wind, and no one knows the drift on which it blew; it came to one place and to another, and to each in a different way. It came, not to many men, but always to one heart, till all men had hold of it.
The Dream
THE experience I am about to set down was perhaps the result, and at any rate it was the sequel, of a conversation engaged between three men in London in the year 1903.
Of these three men one was returned but recently from South Africa, where he had seen all too much of the war; another was a kindly, wealthy, sober sort of man, young, virtuous, and full of inquiry; the third was a hack.