Oswald was his name: and Oswald the Recluse men called him. He was seldom seen, as I have told you. Now and again men had glimpses of him, this at dawn or sunset, walking some distant hillside. Boys penetrating the depths of the forest in search of birds’ nests brought back word of him sitting by his cabin door, very still and silent. Yet none ventured within distance of discovery by him; or fancied they did not. Had they guessed at the alert mind within the still body, they had known their presence less hidden than they fondly imagined.
It disturbed him no more than the scampering of a squirrel up a tree, or the rustle of a dormouse among dried leaves. These brown-faced youngsters, peering shyly curious from among bush and bracken, were to him but part and parcel of the great stream of Nature’s life around him. They were young enough to have no conscious separation from it. They took hunger and sleepiness in the natural course of things, neither denying the one nor combating the other. He saw in them merely young animals, unselfconscious though shy of the unknown: in this case of himself. It was with your grown man that, for the most part, he knew himself in lack of sympathy; those who neither consciously nor unconsciously accept Nature as their mistress, nor see their own lordship of her: those who grumble and carp at her decrees, master neither of her nor of themselves.
In this mastery alone he saw full freedom of spirit. I have told you that he worshipped Nature; that she was his mistress. This is true. But it was the worship a man gives to the woman who is his mate as well as his goddess; who knows himself her lord even while he does her willing homage.
One night, standing before his cabin door, he surveyed the stars. The air was still and frosty: the quiet of the sleeping forest lay around him. This was the hour he felt his own most fully; himself awake, alive, while Nature slept. Even the trees were wrapt to slumber, very motionless, their bare branches darkly outlined against the luminous sky. There was no moon: among the brighter stars the Milky Way flung her whitely powdered track, a far-off illimitable path. Immensity around him, his soul winged dauntless out to it.
Suddenly he came back to earth, very alert, on the scent of an intruder. You would have declared all around to be silent, still as the grave: Oswald stood with head bent, listening intently. The minutes passed: from far off came the lightest stirring of the undergrowth, a mere rustle as of the faintest breath of wind. Muscles tensioned, Oswald raised his head, looked towards the place whence the sound had come. Now it grew more distinct; there was the snapping of a twig. Suddenly from among the trees stepped a tall man, dark-cloaked. The two confronted each other, hostile for the moment.
Oswald broke the silence, since truly it behooved one of them to break it.
“Who are you?” he asked, putting the most natural question, and the one that came readiest to his tongue.
“One, Peregrine,” replied the intruder. “Truly an’ you are surprised to see me, which I take it you be, I am none less surprised to see you. Are you spirit or mortal?”
“Very much mortal,” returned Oswald laughing. “And mortal enough to be frankly startled by your appearance. I look not for wayfarers so far afield, and at this hour.”