a village, the thatched cottages with their white gables rising prettily from the blossoming orchards.  Ditton on its little hill; and the old iron bridge thundered and clanked with a passing train; then came the rattle of the grinds; and the mean houses of Barnwell; and soon we were gliding up among the backs, under the bridge of St. John’s, by the willow-hung walks of Trinity, by the ivied walls and trim gardens of Clare, past the great white palace-front of King’s, and so by the brick gables and oriels of Queens’ into the Newnham mill-pool.  It was somehow not like Cambridge, but like some enchanted town of palaces; and I would not break the spell; so we swung about, made no stay, and then slowly reversed the whole panorama again, through the long, still afternoon.

The old life of Cambridge—­it was all there, after the long years, just the same, full of freshness and laughter; but I came into it as a revenant, and yet with no sense of sadness, rather of joy that it should all be so continuous and bright.  I did not want it back; I did not desire any part in it, but was merely glad to watch and remember.  I thought of myself as a fitful boy full of dreams and hopes, some fulfilled, some unfulfilled; those that I have realised so strangely unlike what I expected, those unrealised still beckoning with radiant visage.  I did not even desire any companionship, any interchange of thought and mood.  Was it selfish, dull, unenterprising to be so content?  I do not think so, for a stream of gentle emotion, which I know was sweet and which I think was pure, lapsed softly through my mind all day.  It is not always thus with me, and I took the good day from the hands of God as a perfect gift; and though it would be easy to argue that I could have been better employed, a deeper instinct said to me that I was meant to be thus, and that, after all, God sends us into the world to live, though often enough our life tosses like a fretful stream among rocky boulders and under troubled skies.  God can give and he can withhold; I do not question his power or his right; I mourn over the hard gifts from his hand; but when he sends me a sweet gift, let me try to realise, what I do not doubt, that indeed he wishes me well.

Once in the afternoon we stayed our boat, and I climbed to the top of the flood-bank and sate looking out over the wide fen; I saw the long dykes run eastward, the far-off churches, the distant hazy hills; and I thought of all the troubles that men make for each other, adding so wantonly to the woes of the world.  And I wondered what was this strange fibre of pain so inwoven in the life of the world, wondered wistfully and rebelliously, till I felt that I drew nearer in that quiet hour to the Heart of God.  I could not be mistaken.  There was peace hidden there, the peace that to-day brooded over the kindly earth, all carpeted with delicate green, in the cool water lapping in the reeds, in the green thorn-bush and the birds’ sudden song, even in this restless heart that would fain find its haven and its home.