PROPHETIC.
The look, the air that frets thy sight,
May be a token that below,
The soul has closed in deadly fight
With some eternal fiery foe,
Whose glance would scorch thy smiling grace,
And cast thee, shuddering, on thy face.
Spring in the South is a season of the most enchanting beauty. Forests of odoriferous, blossoming trees, thickets of sweet-scented shrubs, and fields of fragrant wild flowers fill the atmosphere with their delicious perfume; climbing vines twine around the trees and overgrow the fences, transforming them into arbors and to hedges of flowering plants of matchless bloom and fragrance; while myriads of bright-winged birds enliven all the sunny air with their glad melody. It is a season and a scene no lover of nature could look upon without rapture.
But the summer, with its advanced luxuriance of beauty, too often brings malaria, pestilence and death.
The promise of the spring to one in Valentine's condition had been too fair to last for any length of time. Clouds began to gather over his head. First, as Mr. Waring went no longer to town to spend his evenings, it followed as a matter of course that he frequently required Valentine's services at that hour at home. On inquiring for his servant upon these occasions, and receiving the answer that Valentine had gone to town to see his wife, he would grow angry, and exclaim, with an oath:
"I have never had any good of that boy since his foolish marriage. In town every night! This thing is getting to be insufferable, and shall be stopped."
And one morning, when Valentine returned, Mr. Waring told him that he was not to take himself off to see his wife every evening, but that in future he must ask permission to do so.
Now, anger was Valentine's easily besetting sin, the one dangerous internal foe he had constantly to combat. Now, indignation rose and swelled in his bosom. And not from fear or from policy, but from Christian principle, he strove to quell its ragings. He answered only with a bow, and left the room for that silent, solitary struggle with himself that no eye but the Father's ever witnessed. He obeyed the mandate; it was galling, but he obeyed it; and each evening presented himself to his master with something like this style of request, which, as a compromise between asking a permission and intimating a purpose, was not so difficult to make:
"I have got through all my business here for to-day, sir, and am ready to go to town if you don't want me."
"Very well; take yourself off; only be sure to come back early in the morning, to be ready when I rise," would be the frequent answer. "The proud rascal! I believe he would almost as lief die as ask leave to do anything; but it is my own fault; I have treated that boy like a brother, until he is so spoiled as to be quite above his condition," Mr. Waring would add, half jesting, half in earnest.