“We’ll be wedded in the spring,” Creed’s lips murmured against her own. “I’ll carry home a bride to the old place. Oh, we’ll be happy, Judith.”
All through the latter part of the night, while the two lovers were drawing out of the ways of doubt and pain and misunderstanding, into so full and sweet a communion, the November breeze had been rising; toward dawn it moved quite steadily. And with its impulse moved the cedar tree, a long, smooth swaying, that set free that tender, baritone legato to which Judith’s ears had harkened away last March, when she came home from Hepzibah after first seeing Creed Bonbright. It was the voice which had talked to her throughout the spring, the early summer, through autumn’s desolate days, when the waiting in ignorance of his whereabouts and of his welfare seemed almost more than she could bear; it was the voice which had called upon her so tragically, so insistently, the night of the raid on Nancy Card’s cabin. But Creed himself was here now; Creed’s own lips spoke close to her ear. The cedar tree had its song to itself once more; she no longer needed its music. Its sound was unheard by her, as the flame of a candle is unseen in the strong light of the sun.
Chapter XXVIII
A Prophecy
Over the shoulder of Yellow Old Bald up came the sun, bannered and glorious; the distant ranges glowed in his splendours; the sere fields about the place were all gilded. The small-paned eastern window of the sick-room let in a flood of morning light. Gone was the bird choir that used to welcome his earliest rays, swept south by the great tide of migration. Those that remained, snowbird, cardinal, and downy woodpecker—the “checkerbacker” of the mountaineer,—harboured all night and much of the day in the barn loft and in Judith’s cedar tree. Their twittering sounded cheerily about the eaves.
Back and forth in the puncheon-floored kitchen trudged old Dilsey Rust’s heavy-shod foot, carrying her upon the appointed tasks of the day.
In the quiet sick-room, where the low, alternating voices had subsided into an exchange of murmured words, suddenly Creed dropped his head back to stare at his companion with startled eyes.
“Judith!” he exclaimed. “Where are the boys?”