William Jordan, Junior

by J. C. Snaith

“Achilles, thy son, heeds thee, my mother,” he said as the bracken began to yield to his steps; “he will not tarry until he has made the streets of the great city, so that when he returns into sanctuary he may find the strength in his right hand.”

With bold and quick steps, as light as those of a deer, the wayfarer went his way through the chill dawn. When he came out into the beautiful expanse of the fields, the east shone with morning.

His feet unconsciously sought the well-remembered tracks of his previous way. The will seemed not to direct the steps of the wayfarer, yet not once did they stray from the path upon which formerly they had come. At noon the weather turned bitterly inclement. The winds blew piercingly from every quarter, and presently the first flakes of the winter’s snow were shaken out of the adverse heavens. But the wayfarer pressed on and on into the very teeth of the gale. Asking neither shelter nor refreshment, his frame, in its puissance, consumed the miles, for he feared lest the sight of his eyes should desert him ere he could cross the threshold of the sanctuary that awaited him and the strength he bore in his right hand.

As the sombre light of the afternoon was waning his feet were once more upon the pavements of the streets of the great city. The wind whistled round the corners of the gaunt houses; the air was thickened by gusts of sleet, which pierced his skin, and stung his frame to new endeavours.

He recalled all the objects he passed with a strange kind of exaltation; the houses and shops that he could so indistinctly see; the hurrying crowds of people in the streets—the “street-persons” of his childhood, who were “street-persons” no more. The roar of the traffic filled his surprised ears, yet only to enkindle them with a high and grave joy; for it was another manifestation of that to which his whole being owed its entrancement, the universal voice of the Earth, his mother.

XLIV

The lamps were being lighted in the streets, yet he could hardly see them. Not once, however, did his feet stray from the path of his well-remembered way.

With the autumnal sleet ever beating upon his bared head, he found himself again in the streets of the great city. On the threshold of a public-house, flaring with many garish lights, he saw a boy selling matches. He was whimpering with the cold, and his teeth were chattering, for he had neither shoes nor stockings; indeed, his only garments were a pair of ragged trousers and a shirt. As the wayfarer discerned this unhappy figure he stayed his steps, and, pulling off his own broken boots and threadbare stockings, bade the boy sit down and put them on. When the boy had obeyed, the wayfarer took from his own shoulders the shepherd’s shawl which he wore, and wrapped it about him.

Thereafter it was in the scantiest of raiment that he took his way. Yet ere he had come to the threshold of the little room, which he seemed only to have left the day before yesterday, he was destined to take part in a curious adventure.

It happened as he turned into a familiar thoroughfare, a street long and narrow, and wondrously busy with a great press of people and traffic, that he suddenly became aware of a strange clamour that was arising before him. Cries of consternation resounded on every side; they overcame the shrieks of the piercing winds as they swept round the houses and shops. With his dim eyes the wayfarer could perceive the drivers of the vehicles make frantic efforts to escape from an oncoming danger that threatened them.