Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/32

 potent over the unseen wonders of the water-world, to 'call up spirits from the vasty deep,' which will really 'come if you do call for them'—at least if the conjuration be orthodox—and they there. That spell was broken by the sight of poor wearied pug, his once gracefully-floating brush all draggled and drooping, as he toiled up the sheep-paths toward the open down above.

But Lancelot's sadness reached its crisis, as he met. the hounds just outside the churchyard. Another moment—they had leapt the rails; and there they swept round under the grey wall, leaping and yelling, like Berserk fiends, among the frowning tombstones, over the cradles of the quiet dead.

Lancelot shuddered—the thing was not wrong—'it was no one's fault,'—but there was a ghastly discord in it. Peace and strife, time and eternity—the mad noisy flesh, and the silent immortal spirit—the frivolous game of life's outside show, and the terrible earnest of its inward abysses, jarred together without and within him. He pulled his horse up violently, and stood as if rooted to the place, gazing at he knew not what.

The hounds caught sight of the fox, burst into one frantic shriek of joy—and then a sudden and ghastly stillness, as, mute and breathless, they toiled up the hill- side, gaining on their victim at every stride. The patter of the horsehoofs and the rattle of rolling flints died away above. Lancelot looked up, startled at the silence; laughed aloud, he knew not why, and