The darkness had deepened; Courtland was invisible; but we could picture the gesture—a wide sweep of the arm outward, ending in a discouraged droop. "I've explained nothing, pointed out nothing, merely retold it to you as I repeat and repeat it to myself, merely to have at which to stare and stare. And it always ends in this: I see her again, always; I see her glide to him, note the sweet gravity of her gesture, the tremulous profundity of her glance. I hear that phrase, that holy, incomprehensible phrase. And I wonder, I wonder, that's all; and an awe seizes me, bends me down low, as if before something big, terrible, and infinitely sacred."
IV
THE STRUGGLES AND TRIUMPH OF ISIDRO DE LOS MAESTROS
I—FACE TO FACE WITH THE FOE
Returning to his own town, after a morning spent in "working up" the attendance of one of his far and recalcitrant barrio-schools, the Maestro of Balangilang was swaying with relaxed muscle and half-closed eyes to the allegretto trot of his little native pony, when he pulled up with a start, wide awake and all his senses on the alert. Through his somnolence, at first in a low hum, but fast rising in a fiendish crescendo, there had come a buzzing sound, much like that of one of the sawmills of his California forests, and now, as he sat in the saddle, erect and tense, the thing ripped the air in ragged tear, shrieked vibrating into his ear, and finished its course along his spine in delicious irritation.
"Oh, where am I?" murmured the Maestro, blinking; but between blinks he caught the flashing green of the palay fields and knew that he was far from the sawmills of the Golden State. So he raised his nose to heaven, and there, afloat above him in the serene blue, was the explanation. It was a kite, a great locust-shaped kite, darting and swooping in the hot monsoon, and from it, dropping plumb, came the abominable clamour.
"Aha!" exclaimed the Maestro, pointing accusingly at the thin line vaguely visible against the skyline in a diagonal running from the kite above him to a point ahead in the road. "Aha! there's something at the end of that; there's Attendance at the end of that!"
With which significant remark he leaned forward in the saddle, bringing his switch down with a whizz behind him. The pony gave three rabbit leaps and then settled down to his drumming little trot. As they advanced, the line overhead dropped gradually. Finally the Maestro had to swerve the horse aside to save his helmet. He pulled up to a walk, and, a few yards further, came to the spot where string met earth in the expected Attendance.