“The ‘gold for silver’ creed?”
“Do you not know your Bones and I? They were the last of my prophets.”
He began to misquote, laughing a little, but without any bitterness at all now:
“Gold for silver: old lamps for new: stack your capital in the bank that in the end pays cent for cent—the bank of human kindness, where the bonds are charity, help to the broken-down, sympathy with the bust-up, protection to the weak-kneed, encouragement to the forlorn, etc; and afterwards the inscription on your tomb or in some one’s memory:
“‘What he spent he had: what he saved he lost! What he gave he has.’
“Ah! what a long time since I heard those words, and believed that any one could be such a fool as to try and live up to them!”
“How can you say that?” I said. “It is still your creed. If ever any one protected the weak-kneed and encouraged the forlorn you have done it to-night.”
At that we both began to laugh. The shadows had fled from his brow, and his face had no more marks on it than Dick’s when he and I played together as children. Indeed, we were both as happy as children. Later he stepped down from the cart to feed the fires and fetch my rugs from where they still lay on the ground. He wrapped them round me, for the air had grown very chill, and told me to sleep. And I did, for the heavy weariness of the small morning hours had suddenly stolen upon me.
When I awoke the stars were pale in the sky, and dawn, with pearl and purple and amber on her feet, was treading the distant hills. A long line of red-legged birds streaked overhead, calling to each other as they passed. The rush of the river, which could now be plainly seen glinting between the trees, was like music on the air. A cloak of silver dew lay over grass and fern and the massed foliage of the bush; and little veldt flowers were lifting their pink faces to give forth a sweet scent. Against the faint rose and amber of the horizon a blue spiral of smoke ascended from a newly-built fire, on which the kettle was already boiling for breakfast. The only grim thing to be seen in all that fair place was the long, honey-coloured body of the dead lion, stretched upon the carpet of grass and flowers. His great shaggy head lay amidst a mass of bright wild lilies: but already little beetles and ants were busy about his blood-reddened mouth and open eyes. It was the only joyless thing to be seen, but it had no power to sadden me. I, too, was full of the glad spirit of morning, and my singing heart gave thanks as it had never done before for the magic gift of life.