A Nest of Linnets

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“I promise you that they shall have neither my money nor my life, friend Dick,” said Mr. Long, looking round as if in expectation of seeing some one.

“We are before the appointed time,” said Dick, framing an answer to his inquiring look.

“We shall have the longer space to admire the prospect from yon knoll,” said his friend. “I am minded to have a stroll round the paddock. I promise you that I shall not disgrace you by running away.”

He waved his hand to Dick, who accepted the gesture as an indication that he desired to be alone. He busied himself about the ground while Mr. Long strolled toward the hedge that ran alongside the narrow lane skirting the paddock.

Dick fancied that he understood his desire to be alone for the brief space left to him before the probable arrival of Mathews and O’Teague. Could Mr. Long doubt for a moment that Mathews would do his best to kill him? Surely not.

So, then, the next quarter of an hour would decide the question whether he was to live or die. Dick remembered what Mr. Long had told him respecting his early life—his early love—his enduring love. What had his words been at that time?

“Those who die young have been granted the gift of perpetual youth.”

He watched Mr. Long walking slowly and with bent head up the sloping ground by the bramble hedge. He could believe that he was communing with the one of whom he had never ceased to think as his companion—the one who walked unseen by his side—whose gracious presence had never ceased to influence him throughout his life. And then, all at once the younger man became conscious of that invisible presence. Never before had he been aware of such an impression. It was not shadowy. It was not vague. It was not a suggestion of the imagination. It was an impression as real as that of the early morning air which exhilarated him—as vivid as that of the song of the skylark which had left its nest at the upper part of the green meadow, and was singing while it floated into the azure overhead. He felt as if he were standing beneath outspread wings, and the consciousness was infinitely gracious to him. All through the night and so far into the morning he had been in great trouble of thought. The shocking possibilities of this duel had suggested themselves to him every moment, and it was with a feeling of profound depression that he had taken the case of pistols from the carriage and entered the paddock.

But now, with the suddenness of entering a wide space of free air, out of a narrow room of suffocating vapours—with the suddenness of stepping into the sunlight out of a cell, his depression vanished. He felt safe beneath the shadow of those gracious, outstretched wings. Every suggestion that had come to him during the night, every thought of the likelihood of disaster, disappeared.

The dead are mightier than the living.