Rising from his bed, he went out of doors, and looked up into the dark heavens; and high and spectral among the clouded stars he saw the home-coming of the cranes.  He sat on the bench beside his door, and watched them sail past in thousands, filling the night with a fleeting clamour and eerie sounds.  As he sat he mused on the strange longing which brought these birds over land and sea back home, year by year, with the returning spring, and he marvelled that the souls of men, which are but birds of passage in these earthly fields, should be so slow to feel that longing for their true home-land.