The inner stage was cleared and set for a new act.

He had lowered the light, he had rested, and he had filled the interval with forms and determinations beautiful and vague, vague as the mists, the sounds, the tossed arms of the Ossian he had dared to open last night, before his father, by the camp-fire of the mountaineers.

In the twilight of his theatre he rested; a shadowy figure, full of mysteries, full of possibilities, a boy in the grasp of the man within him, neither boy nor man unlovable, nor wholly unadmirable, both seen, and seeing, "through a glass darkly." He turned on his side, and the light went up sharply.

A man riding a beautiful and spirited horse was coming over the hilltop.

Horse and rider paused a moment upon the crest, standing clear against the eastern sky.