He got to his feet, and, standing before the window, repeated a verse aloud: "Cheer, cheer thy dogs into the brake, O hunter! and without a fear Thy golden-tassell'd bugle blow, And through the glades thy pasture take For thou wilt rouse no sleepers here! For these thou seest are unmoved; Cold, cold as those who lived and loved A thousand years ago." He was so engrossed that he did not hear the door open.

He again repeated the lines with the affectionate modulation of a musician.

He knew that they were right.

They were hot with life--a life that was no more a part of this peaceful landscape than a palm-tree would be.

He felt that he ought to read the poem in a desert, out by the Polar Sea, down on the Amazon, yonder at Nukualofa; that it would fit in with bearding the Spaniards two hundred years ago.