William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

Pressing ever on and on, he came out at last upon the fringe of this great wood, and by now the sun had risen to warm his veins. The wayfarer was now come to the breast of the mighty mother; and on this second day he reposed many hours on the green, dry earth of the forest, looking all about him into its dark recesses, and observing in a kind of secret joy the ways of the rich, wild life of whom he claimed kinship.

Towards evening he came upon another little house in the heart of the great wood, and then he remembered that he was hungry. Here he obtained from another aged woman a hunch of white bread and a bowl of delicious milk. And then for the second time he lay down and slept in the heart of the great wood.

Days and days did he pass in his wanderings. Sometimes he was in the woodland places, sometimes upon the weald. He would lie in the fallows in the burning afternoon sun; and now and again in the chill of the night, if he could not find warmth in the thickets, he would enjoy the protection of a barn or a cowhouse, or, if these were to seek, he would walk in a joyful silence through the long hours, until the morning was again in his eyes.

One day in his ceaseless journeying he suddenly beheld the sea. It was at noon upon a delicious day of midsummer. He ran down to the beach, with a noble rapture in his veins, and, flinging off his clothes, he waded out into the cool water. For many days he kept ever by the side of the sea. He could not forsake that marvellous companion; and on several occasions, when he found old men in boats upon the beach, he persuaded them to row him out upon the many-smiling wilderness.

Even after the summer had waned his wanderings continued. They bore him into all kinds of wonderful and unexpected places. Sometimes he found himself in the high and mountainous country; and here the grandeur, the solitude, and the marvellous hues and the deep-breathing silences would endue him with the awe of his inheritance. And wherever he was borne by the irresponsible passion of his steps, he beheld infinite wonders. He saw great pits sunk into the bowels of the earth; he saw curious and grimy peoples, yet it cost him no pang to admit them into all-embracing kinship with himself, and with the Earth, his mother.

When as the tints of autumn fell about the quiet earth, and he felt the shrewd airs of the tall mountains of the west, he heard their voices in such wise in his ears, as never before had addressed them. With a loud, fervent cry, he flung himself down upon the fruitful brown soil, and pressed his lips rapturously to the bosom of Earth, his mother.

The wonderful hues of the autumn deepened in their silent rapidity, until the ruthless winter was come. Then the wayfarer persuaded an old shepherd to give him his shawl, and clad therein, and moving ever upon the peaks of the mountains, he came into the north. And there he learned many of the cunning but simple arts of these wise mountain peoples—those hardy children who wrested but a reluctant nourishment from the bare ground.

It was here that, driven by the stress of winter, the wayfarer shared the hospitality of the fisherman’s hut, the ploughman’s byre, and the rude hearth of the crofter and the shepherd. It was in these altitudes that he renewed the garments for his back and the shoes for his feet. His scant store of pieces of silver had been consumed long ago, but, like one of his kin in a remote age, he did not fear to beg his bread from door to door. Now and again he would requite his hosts, who asked nought in return, as he sat in the chimney-place, warmed by a fire of peats and a basin of food, with wonderful tales out of the past, and glorious stories of the youth of the world. And these he would clothe in such wise that the simple hearts of his friends would swell with gladness.

He did not fear the snow in the dales, the ice in the burns, nor the barren and implacable wastes which confronted him everywhere. Many and curious were the deeds he performed, strange were the sights that he witnessed. He made acquaintance with the red deer, and the mountain sheep, and the fowls of the moorland; he learned to speak every man in his own tongue; and never once in all these vicissitudes, although he had no piece of silver in his coat, did he suffer denial.

He was ragged and unkempt; he was almost as frail as a phantom; his skin was coloured a deep brown by exposure to the weather; his hair, thick and matted, came down to his shoulders, and his large and bright eyes seemed to envelop the whole of his face. By the time the spring came round again, and the cycle of the seasons had completed itself, he found his feet again upon the yellow shores of the loud-sounding sea. Yet now he did not linger within its magical thrall. For a long dormant passion had again begun to stir within him, and he knew that the hour was near when he must return to the aged man, his father, and to the little room.