[ THE CONCLUSION BY THE WAYFARERS ]
THE PLACE OF THE ABANDONED GODS
The hut was built two sides and the roof of sodded poles; the roof had new clapboards of birch bark, but the rest had once belonged to a charcoal burner; the front side was partly poled and partly open, the back was the under-slope of a rock. For it stood by a cliff, one of the many that show their lonely faces all over the Cattle Ridge, except that this was more tumultuous than most, and full of caves made by the clumsy leaning bowlders; and all about were slim young birch trees in white and green, like the demoiselles at Camelot. Old pines stood above the cliff, making a soft, sad noise in the wind. In one of the caves above the leafage of the birches we kept the idols, especially Baal, whom we thought the most energetic; and in front of the cave was the altar-stone that served them all, a great flat rock and thick with moss, where ears of com were sacrificed, or peas or turnips, the first-fruits of the field; or of course, if you shot a chipmunk or a rabbit, you could have a burnt offering of that kind. Also the altar-stone was a council chamber and an outlook.
It was all a secret place on the north side of the Cattle Ridge, with cliffs above and cliffs below. Eastward half a mile lay the Cattle Ridge Road, and beyond that the Ridge ran on indefinitely; southward, three miles down, the road took you into Hagar; westward the Ridge, after all its leagues of length and rigor of form, broke down hurriedly to the Wyantenaug River, at a place called the Haunted Water, where stood the Leather Hermit's hut and beyond which were Bazilloa Armitage's bottom-lands and the Preston Plains railroad station. The road from the station across the bridge came through Sanderson Hollow, where the fields were all over cattle and lively horses, and met the Cattle Ridge Road to Hagar. And last, if you looked north from the altar-stone, you saw a long, downward sweep of woodland, and on and on miles and miles to the meadows and ploughed lands toward Wimberton, with a glimpse of the Wyantenaug far away to the left. Such were the surroundings of the place of abandoned gods. No one but ourselves came there, unless possibly the Hermit. If any one had come it was thought that Baal would pitch him over the cliffs in some manner, mystically. We got down on our hands and knees, and said, “O Baal!” He was painted green, on a shingle; but his eyes were red. The place was reached from the Cattle Ridge Road by trail, for the old wood-road below was grown up to blackberry brambles, which made one scratched and bloody and out of patience, unless it were blackberry time.
And on the bank, where the trail drops into the climbing highway, there Aaron and Silvia were sitting in the June afternoon, hand in hand, with the filtered green light of the woods about them. We came up from Hagar, the three of us, and found them. They were strangers, so far as we knew. Strangers or townsmen, we never took the trail with any one in sight; it was an item in the Vows. But we ranged up before them and stared candidly. There was nothing against that. Her eyes were nice and blue, and at the time they contained tears. Her cheeks were dimpled and pink, her brown dress dusty, and her round straw hat cocked a bit over one tearful blue eye. He seemed like one who had been growing fast of late. His arms swung loosely as if fastened to his shoulders with strings. The hand that held her small hand was too large for its wrist, the wrist too large for the arm, the arm too long for the shoulder. He had the first growth of a downy mustache, a feeble chin, a humorous eye, and wore a broad-brimmed straw hat and a faded black coat, loose and flopping to his knees. A carpet bag lay at his feet, only half full and fallen over with an air of depression. He seemed depressed in the same way.