Presently their host poured a steaming liquid into each of the empty cups by their plates.
"Perhaps you will not relish my tea," he said, "but it is soothing and not harmful. It is drawn from certain roots and herbs I have gathered, and it is not ill-tasting. Here is sweet, also; made from the maple tree."
An aromatic odor arose from the cups, and, when Constance tasted the beverage and added a lump of the sugar, she declared the result delicious—a decision in which Frank willingly concurred.
The host himself did not join the feast, and presently fell to cooking another pan of trout. It was a marvel how they disappeared. Even the squirrels came out of their hiding places to witness this wonderful feasting, a few bolder ones leaping upon the table, as was their wont, to help themselves from a large bowl of cracked nuts. And all this delighted the visitors. Everything was so extraordinary, so simple and near to nature, so savoring of the romance of the old days. This wide, rambling room with its recesses lost in the shadows; the low, dim roof supported by its living columns; the glowing fireplace and the blazing knot; the wild pelts scattered here and there, and the curious skin-clad figure in the firelight—certainly these were things to stir delightfully the heart of youth, to set curious fancies flitting through the brain.
"Oh," murmured Constance, "I wish we might stay in a place like this forever!" Then, reddening, added hastily, "I mean—I mean——"
"Yes," agreed Frank, "I mean that, too—and I wish just the same. We could have fish every day, and such hoecake, and this nice tea, and I would pick berries like these, and you could gather mushrooms. And we would have squirrels to amuse us, and you would read to me, and perhaps I should write poems of the hills and the storms and the haunted woods, and we could live so close to nature and drink so deeply of its ever renewing youth that old age could not find us, and we should live on and on and be always happy—happy ever after."
The girl's hand lay upon the table, and when his heavier palm closed over it she did not draw it away.
"I can almost love you when you are like this," she whispered.
"And if I am always like this——?"
They spoke very low, and the hermit sat in the high-back chair, bowed and staring into the blaze. Yet perhaps something of what they said drifted to his ear—perhaps it was only old and troubling memories stirring within him that caused him to rise and walk back and forth before the fire.