“It is a strange subject this,” said Mossgray, with the smile of his gentle musings, “for with all my years, and with all my changes, Lilias, I smile sometimes to see how the old pertinacious self has carried its own features through all. Up there in my study, where I left Bishop Berkeley this morning, was it yesterday I manufactured bows and arrows and dreamed as I made them? So strange it is to mark how this identity runs through all, how we learn and alter, are experienced, calmed, changed, and yet are perpetually the same.”
Gentle philosophies! how soothingly they fell upon the timid, anxious heart beside him.
“But sometimes the change is violent, Mossgray,” said Lilias, “tearing up old habits so rudely; and sometimes the whole discipline is altered—the whole life.”
She paused. The old tales of that strange eastern life crossed her memory, and she could not continue.
“I think these things only develope this obstinate identity more fully, Lilias,” said Mossgray, smiling. “We come through the process after our own individual fashion, and carry the distinct self triumphantly through every change. I think we must turn back, though, and leave our philosophies if you begin to tremble. Come, we will go home.”
They turned towards the house, but Lilias only trembled the more; and the old man, as he looked down upon her pale face, beheld it suddenly flush into brilliant change. She stood still, leaning on him heavily.
“Are you ill? does anything ail you, Lilias?”
“No, no; it is Hew!” said the low, joyous voice; “look, Mossgray, it is Hew!”
And the old man started violently, as he looked up at the young, strong, manlike figure leaping down that hillock, with its rude steps of knotted trees—the happy flushed cheek, the frank simplicity of joy and haste.
“It is Hew!” said Lilias, looking up at the one object which she saw.