“The fight for freedom seems to be a never-ending one.”
“Because,” said the preacher, “Man was created free. Freedom is his birthright, even though he be born in a prison, and in chains. Hence, the noblest men are not satisfied with physical and political freedom; they must also be free men in Christ Jesus; for let me tell you, if men are slaves to sin and the devil, not all the Magna Chartas, nor all the swords in the world, can make them truly free.”
And thus they talked until the moon set and the last light was out in the cabins, and the ‘after midnight’ feeling became plainly evident. Then Phyllis brought out a dish that looked very like walnut shells, but which all welcomed. They were preserved bears’ paws. “Eat,” she said, “for though it is the last hour we may meet in this life, we must sleep now.”
And the Texan luxury was eaten with many a pleasant word, and then, with kind and solemn ‘farewells,’ the little party separated, never in all the years of earth to sit together again; for just at daylight, John and Phyllis stood at their gates, watching the carriage which carried Richard and Elizabeth pass over the hill, and into the timber, and out of sight.
CHAPTER XI.
“The evening of life brings with it its lamp.”—TOUBERT.
“And there arrives a lull in the hot race:
And an unwonted calm pervades the breast.
And then he thinks he knows
The hills where his life rose,
And the sea, where it goes.”—ARNOLD
“She has passed
To where, beyond these voices, there is peace.”
It is the greatest folly to think that the only time worth writing about is youth. It is an equal folly to imagine that love is the only passion universally interesting. Elizabeth’s years were no less vivid, no less full of feeling and of changes, after her marriage than before it. Indeed, she never quite lost the interests of her maiden life. Hallam demanded an oversight she did not fail to give it. Three times during the twelve years of its confiscation to Antony’s creditors she visited it. In these visits she was accompanied by Richard, and Harry, and her own children. Then the Whaleys’ accounts were carefully gone over, and found always to be perfectly honorable and satisfactory. And it is needless to say how happy Martha was at such times.
Gradually all ill-feeling passed away. The young squire, though educated abroad, had just such a training as made him popular. For he passed part of every year in Texas with Dick Millard, and all that could be known about horses and hunting and woodcraft, Harry Hallam knew. He had also taken on very easily the Texan manner, frank, yet rather proud and phlegmatic: “Evidently a young man who knows what he wants, and will be apt to get it,” said Whaley.