A suspicion of real haze hung over Newburgh; the more distant hills looked faint and dreamy. Far up the river a long tow wound silently down, leaving its trail upon the quiet water; nearby a sloop or two went softly on, spreading their white wings to the breeze. There was just enough air stirring to lift and drop, lift and drop, the bunting on the flagstaff.
Magnus sat looking and listening, drawing a deep breath now and then. How long it seemed since he first saw Trophy Point and that flagstaff!—and it was really but fourteen months. He glanced up at the flag, just then shaking out its lovely folds. That had not changed. And he knew his mother had not; she would be just the same blessed person she had always been. But how about himself? and what would she think of him? And now, studying that question, Magnus took out mentally his own private stand of colours and looked at them, matching them with the flag overhead. It hung very still just then; and yet he could see a star here, a touch of the stripes there. Storms might beat it to ribands, but they could not change the colours nor make the flag come down.
"That weak strip of bunting!" thought Magnus, with a certain interlining of words not complimentary to himself. And other words written above his father's grave came quick and clear: "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
Magnus stood up and walked slowly along the little path to another point, whence he could see the "Central" road.
"I'm no end glad she's coming!"—so ran his thoughts. "But I just wonder how she'll like her boy? And there she comes!"
For now a puff of white smoke rose up at the mouth of the Breakneck tunnel and then fell into a long, curling line, and began to wind its way rapidly along the curves of the river road.
Magnus watched it, jumped on the seat to see it better still, and then tossed his cap into the air like any boy let out of school.
"Hurrah, old flag!" he cried; "there she comes! Now you'll see somebody worth looking at."
The white line rushed on, paused at Cold Spring, whirled along over the north bay and hid itself in the green Island woods, while Magnus, again waving his cap and this time so recklessly that it was near going down the hill, hurried away to Battery Knox, ran up on the green parapet, and stood to watch. The engine came puffing over the south bay as if the fate of the nation hung on its speed, dived into the Garrisons tunnel and slowed up.