"The people of the new lands—the pioneers, if you choose, the modern colonists, the trail blazers."
"I wonder." The idea was new. She considered it gravely. "My parents were city folks; I have lived in the city all my life. And yet I think I have the feeling you speak of. Only I can't put it into words either."
"If you could you would be the most famous person in the world. The song is there, waiting the singer. It has always been there, waiting, and the singer has never come. We who hear it in our hearts have no voices. Now and then some genius strikes the chord by accident, almost, and loses it. I don't think any one will ever find it completely. But if some one should! Heavens! What a grand harmony it would be."
She glanced at him curiously. He was not looking at her. His eyes were on a little cloud, a white island in a sapphire sea. He seemed to be paying no attention whatever to the road, to his surroundings. But as one of the chestnuts stumbled over a loose stone he lifted him instantly with the reins and administered a sharp word of reproof and a light cut of the whip.
"He didn't mean to stumble," said Clyde.
"He should have meant not to. A horse that isn't tired and is paying attention to business should never stumble on a road. It's the slouchy horse that breaks his kind owner's neck some day. Now I'm going to let them out."
So far as Clyde could observe, he did absolutely nothing. But immediately, as though some subtle current had passed from his hands along the lines, the horses' heads came up, their ears pricked forward, their stride quickened and lengthened, and the measured beat of their hoofs became a quickstep. The horses themselves seemed to exult in the change of pace, filling their great lungs through widened nostrils and expelling the air noisily, shaking their heads, proud of themselves and their work.
Mrs. Wade laid a nervous hand on her husband's arm as the light wagon rattled down a descent. But Clyde sat quietly, her lips slightly parted, her eyes shining as the warm wind poured past in a torrent plucking at vagrant strands of her coppery golden hair.
"Fifteen miles an hour," said Casey. "Like it?"
"It's better than fifty in a car," she replied.