And why should not I ?" Let him be a while; there are sounds of deeper meaning in the air, if his heart had ears to hear them; far off church-bells chiming to even-song; hymn-tunes floating up the glen from the little chapel in the vale.

He may learn what they, too, mean some day.

Honour to him, at least, that he has learnt what the missel-thrush below can tell him.

If he accept cheerfully and manfully the things which he does see, he will be all the more able to enter hereafter into the deeper mystery of things unseen.

The road toward true faith and reverence for God's kingdom of heaven does not lie through Manichaean contempt and slander of God's kingdom of earth.
So let him stride over the down, enjoying the mere fact of life, and health, and strength, and whistling shrilly to the bird below, who trumpets out a few grand ringing notes, and repeats them again and again, in saucy self-satisfaction; and then stops to listen for the answer to this challenge; and then rattles on again with a fresh passage, more saucily than ever, in a tone which seems to ask,--"You could sing that, eh?
but can you sing this, my fine fellow on the down above ?" So he seems to Tom to say; and, tickled with the fancy, Tom laughs, and whistles, and laughs, and has just time to compose his features as he steps up to the farm-yard gate.
Let him be, I say again.