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He loved to race around his immense fields when they were beginning to turn green in the late rains. He had been among the first to convert these virgin wastes into rich meadow-lands, supplementing the natural pasturage with alfalfa. Where one beast had found sustenance before, he now had three. "The table is set," he would chuckle, "we must now go in search of the guests."

On the other side was the flat, winding coast, composed alternately of yellow sand and bright-green meadow-lands; diversified at intervals by towns and villages, whose red-tiled roofs and quaint church-steeples rose gayly against the clear blue sky. The captain suggested to me to visit the famous towns of Edam and Hoorn; but I declined to go on shore.

For by night the clouds of storm had passed away and gone, and now all the air was clear and blue, and the level beams of light fell athwart the meadow-lands so that countless drops of water sparkled on leaf and blade of grass, like an incredible multitude of shining jewels scattered all over the earth.

Two roads lead out of the town into the lovely meadow-lands, a good mile up the brawling Tepl, before they join on the right side of the torrent, where the Posthof lurks nestled under trees whose boughs let the sun and rain impartially through upon its army of little tables.

From the meadow-lands and the vineyards and the dark forests of the mountains, from study and from rest, I see them move with solemn faces and calm steps. Brave lights are in their eyes, and flowers that are immortal they carry in their hands. No distillation can exhaust the fragrance of those blooms. What dost thou here, Victor? What dost thou here, Jacqueline? This is the place of prisons.

But when we reached the old bridge, with the tall osiers standing by the buttress, and looked back at poor Knowl the places we love and are leaving look so fairy-like and so sad in the clear distance, and this is the finest view of the gabled old house, with its slanting meadow-lands and noble timber reposing in solemn groups I gazed at the receding vision, and the tears came at last, and I wept in silence long after the fair picture was hidden from view by the intervening uplands.

Instead, I relinquished Niafer to Grandfather Death, and at that price I preserved my own life and procured a recipe through which I have prospered unbelievably, so that I am today a nobleman with fine clothes and lackeys, and with meadow-lands and castles of my own, if only I could obtain them.

This went on for some time, but at last one of the boys spied out a woodpecker in the meadow-lands among the wood-pigeons, and when he had found her nest in a half-dead alder tree, came running to Peter with the news of his discovery.

He was peasant and more than peasant; for the majesty of the woods, the broken rocks, the sublime stretches of meadow-lands with their sights, odors and colors intoxicated him with their beauty. He felt as if he had never before looked upon God's beautiful world. And yet Paris was only a day's journey away! There he could find a market for his work.

"You know, señor," he began, "that common report has declared that beneath this Church of San Francisco is a secret passage that extends under the city and has its exit in the outlying meadow-lands. I may confide in you frankly that this passage does exist, and that I, in common with all members of my Order who have dwelt here, know precisely where its entrance is and where its outlet.