“It ought to,” said the old man, working his jaw. “It ought to.”
The black smoke had ceased, and flames were crackling and dancing all over the funeral pyre. The clearer smoke floated up against the face of the lonesome cliff. Aaron and Silvia clasped hands unfrightened. The old man now and then rumbled subterraneously in his throat. Peace was everywhere, and presently Baal-Peor was ashes.
THE LEATHER HERMIT
To know the Wyantenaug thoroughly is to be wise in rivers; which if any one doubts, let him follow it from its springs to the sea—a possible fortnight—and consider then how he is a changed man with respect to rivers. Not that by any means it is the epitome of rivers. It is no spendthrift flood-stream to be whirling over the bottom-lands in April and scarcely able to wet its middle stones in August, but a shrewd and honest river, a canny river flowing among a canny folk, a companionable river, loving both laughter and sentiment, with a taste for the varieties of life and a fine vein of humor. Observe how it dances and sputters down the rapids—not really losing its temper, but pretending to be nervous—dives into that sloping pass where the rocks hang high and drip forever, runs through it like a sleuth-hound, darkly and savagely, and saunters out into the sunlight, as who should say in a guileless manner, “You don't happen to know where I'm going?” Then it wanders about the valley, spreads out comfortably and lies quiet a space, “But it really makes no difference, you know”; and after that gives a chuckle, rounds a bunch of hills and goes scampering off, quite taken up with a new idea. And so in many ways it is an entertaining and friendly river, with a liking for a joke and a pretty notion of dramatic effect.
But, of all times and places, I think it most beautiful in the twilight and along that stretch, called of late the Haunted Water, opposite the village of Preston Plains. The Cattle Ridge with its long heaving spine comes down on the valley from the east, seeming to have it very much in mind to walk over and do something to Preston Plains three miles beyond; but it thought better of that long ago. The Wyantenaug goes close beneath it in sheer bravado: “You try to cross me and you get jolly wet”; for the Wyantenaug is very deep and broad just here. The Cattle Ridge, therefore, merely wrinkles its craggy brows with a puzzled air, and Preston Plains is untroubled save of its own inhabitants. As to that matter the people of the village of Hagar have opinions. The valley road goes on the other side of the river—naturally, for there are the pastures, the feeding cattle, the corn-fields, and farmhouses—and the Cattle Ridge side is steep, and threaded by a footpath only, for a mile or more, up to Hants Corby's place. Hants Corby's is not much of a place either.
In old times the footpath was seldom used, except by the Leather Hermit. No boy in Hagar would go that way for his life, though we often went up and down on the river, and saw the Leather Hermit fishing. The minister in Hagar visited him once or twice, and probably went by the footpath. I remember distinctly how he shook his head and said that the Hermit sought salvation at any rate by a narrow way, and how the miller's wife remonstrated with him for seeming to take the Hermit seriously.
“You don't mean to say he ain't crazy,” she said, in anxious defence of standard reason.
“Oh, I suppose so, yes.”