"Still, you can give us some idea," pursued the old gentleman.
Horace Townsend hesitated and was silent for a moment, when Margaret Hayley said, her eyes just then fixed full upon his: "I think you can, Mr. Townsend, if I am not mistaken in the voice that I heard speaking for the Old Man of the Mountain, by the same moonlight, not many evenings ago."
The dusky cheek of the lawyer was full of red blood in an instant. He had been overheard, then, in his half-mad rhapsody to Rowan and himself. And she had heard him, of all women!—she had spoken with such frankness, not to say boldness, and that frankness appreciation at least, if not admiration! He might have uttered something more about "taking his chances" then, and had full warrant for the self-gratulation!
"I do not suppose that I can tell you either what I saw or felt," said Townsend, when that momentary flush had died away a little from his face. "I will try, however. I had been rolling ten-pins till past eleven, and it must have been midnight when I strolled down towards the Lake. I was in hopes that I should find no one here, for I wished to see it alone as well as by moonlight; and I had my wish. I saw no one and heard no one, on my way to the Lake or while here; and I do not suppose that any foot but my own pressed the damp green velvet that bordered the edge, or that any eye except my own and the All-seeing one that looks down over all the world at all midnights, saw the placid sheet lying in its solemn repose, with the shadows of the great cliff yonder reflected on its bosom, and here and there a little ripple as a puff of wind sighed through the branches, kissed the silver surface and passed over."
The eyes of the speaker were full of humid light as he spoke, and at least one of the company marked the influence which seemed to be upon him—a mood of high imagination, sometimes seen in the ardent lovers of nature when revelling in their chosen study, and though less dangerous not less decided than the madness which habitually fell upon Saul. There was something fascinating in it, to all who saw and heard, even to those who held an intuitive dislike to the seer: what must the fascination have been to Margaret Hayley, who remembered one so unlike in personal appearance and yet so like in voice and apparently in habits of mind, loving nature so intently and describing it with the same fervor, while his love for her made a sacred undertone to all and completed the charm of look and word!
The lawyer needed no further urging, but went on:
"The little dock there, with the boats moored beside it, and the hut where our friend here keeps his horn and cannon,—all lay in a melancholy quiet which struck me like death—as if those who frequented them had gone away at some nightfall years ago, like the workmen who left their trowels in the mortar of unfinished Pompeii on the morning of its destruction,—never to return again and yet ever to be waited for, while the earth kept its course in the heavens. I was alone, and I suppose that imagination ran riot with me and made me partially a maniac. The hush was so awful that I dared not break it, even by a loud breath. I saw the Indians there, under yon sweeping trees to the left, whose branches bend down and almost kiss the water—saw an Indian canoe lying there, faces within it smeared with war-paint and the pointed arrow ready to twang from the bow-string. I expected to hear the war-whoop every instant—expected it, perhaps not in my human mind but in that other and more powerful mind for which we are none of us quite responsible. Then I saw—yes, I was sure that I saw the dusky shadow of a robber flitting along from pine to pine, far up on the side of the cliff there, silent and dangerous as death, and ready to drop down on the first living thing that passed beneath him. Then I saw fiery eyes through the branches, and thought that the panther and the catamount that lurked in these tangled woods two hundred years ago, divided possession once more with the Indians and were prowling about for some late banquet. I do not think that it was fear that I felt, for I would not have gone away if I could, any more than I could have gone away if I would; but it appeared to be the very silent haunt of nature in her hour of rest, wherewith nothing but the wild and the savage had any business; and it seemed impossible to throw aside the idea that even the tread of a civilized foot must be a sacrilege that only life could atone. Then there was a sudden plunge from the bushes into the water, a few yards up the bank, and a ripple following some large dark object swimming away towards the other shore. This was more real, and the feeling of awe began to pass away, for I knew that the swimmer must be a water-rat or otter that had been paying a midnight visit like myself and was now going homeward by the cool and refreshing marine route. That was the first noise I had heard, but others followed, for an owl began to hoot over yonder in the bushes and a young eagle—I suppose it must have been a young eagle—indulged in a scream from the top of the Cliff, where I believe he has a habit of nesting. Then the supernatural and the imaginative rolled away after they had held me an hour or two, and I was simply alone at two o'clock or a little later, beside Echo Lake, only half a mile from the bed that had been all that time waiting for me. I took the warning of the night-owl and the eagle, who no doubt intended to order me off as an intruder, and strolled back to the house. That is all, and perhaps quite enough of such rambling nonsense as it is!"
"Rambling nonsense?" Whatever the other members of the company may have thought, evidently Margaret Hayley did not so regard it as she leaned anxiously forward, the presence of others apparently forgotten, her eyes fascinated in a sort of strange wonder by something in the face of the speaker, while her mind seemed not less singularly under the control of the utterance itself.
Five minutes afterwards the parody on a steamboat touched the little wharf again and the company disembarked. Five minutes after that secondary period they separated from the close communion into which they had been transiently thrown during the preceding half-hour, many of them never to meet again in the same familiarity of intercourse, and perhaps some of them, though as yet inmates of the same abode, never to see each other's faces again in life! Such are the meetings and the partings of summer travel and watering-place existence, to which the nameless rhymer no less truly than touchingly referred when he spoke of those friendships quickly made and as quickly broken:
"——In hostels free to all commands
Save penury's and pity's;—