"Ah! thou dost not understand. Dearly did I love my kingly master; and I grieve that I could not listen to his bidding. But there is something within each of us that when the time comes calls with insistent voice, and then we must leave all and follow. I am but a foolish youth, but this I have learnt: we cannot choose our lives nor in what way we desire to live them; some power there is stronger than our human will that carries us forward upon a road we do not know. I had but a short while ago a venerable master, and these were his words: 'That each man runs after the same thing, although each calls it by a different name.' The master I loved said the name he had found for it was Happiness, but that none of us realize when we have it in our hands. Why he said this I do not know. Dearly did I love to hear him talk, but not always did I grasp the meaning of his words."
"Happiness!" queried the peasant boy; "happiness! It soundeth sweet to the ear; dost thou think that thou shalt find it at the end of the way?"
Eric looked out into the flames of the fire before he slowly replied:
"The master said that we could grasp but the shadow, that the thing itself was God's. Deeply have I pondered over the sense of this saying, and this is what I have found in my mind: God hath not time for each man's clamouring, so He has strewn over the world things that shine and things that lie in the shadow; those that shine dazzle the eye and give pleasure, and those in the dark awake a longing to know, and thus God leads each man forward to search for himself, each according to his desire. But the wise man said that few reach it in the end, and when they do they seldom may keep it long. Ah! but I wish I knew! My heart is so full of longing, and yet I feel that some part of it will never be filled!"
But the peasant boy wanted to hear of other things; to him this talk was but a waste of time.
"Tell me, hast thou really climbed over this barrier of mountains; and how is it thou didst not perish on the way?"
Gundian took his sword between both hands, and looked at it with tears in his eyes:
"This sword kept me from death when I thought my last hour had come, and always, when all hope seemed at an end, something there was that saved me in my bitterest need.
"The old man of the hills believed in my power to win, and then ..."—Eric's voice trembled as he spoke—"I had at my side a sweet little soul that providentially had been given into my care; and a curious thing have I learnt: we can do for others what we cannot do for ourselves. Many a time would I have given in and died, had not the soft hand of the child kept hold on my life by the desire I felt that it should not perish!"
And then, his hands folded over the hilt of his sword, dreamily gazing afar off, Eric related, with many words, all he had seen and done.