HOW BLACK GEORGE AND I SHOOK HANDS
The world was full of sunshine, the blithe song of birds, and the sweet, pure breath of waking flowers as I rose next morning, and, coming to the stream, threw myself down beside it and plunged my hands and arms and head into the limpid water whose contact seemed to fill me with a wondrous gladness in keeping with the world about me.
In a little while I rose, with the water dripping from me, and having made shift to dry myself upon my neckcloth, nothing else being available, returned to the cottage.
Above my head I could hear a gentle sound rising and falling with a rhythmic measure, that told me Donald still slept; so, clapping on my hat and coat, I started out to my first day's work at the forge, breakfastless, for the good and sufficient reason that there was none to be had, but full of the glad pure beauty of the morning. And I bethought me of the old Psalmist's deathless words: "Though sorrow endure for a night, yet joy cometh in the morning" (brave, true words which shall go ringing down the ages to bear hope and consolation to many a wearied, troubled soul); for now, as I climbed the steep path where bats had hovered last night, and turned to look back at the pit which had seemed a place of horror—behold! it was become a very paradise of quivering green, spangled with myriad jewels where the dew yet clung.
Indeed, if any man would experience the full ecstasy of being alive—the joi de vivre as the French have it—let him go out into the early morning, when the sun is young, and look about him with a seeing eye.
So, in a little while, with the golden song of a blackbird in my ears,
I turned village-wards, very hungry, yet, nevertheless, content.
Long before I reached the smithy I could hear the ring of Black George's hammer, though the village was not yet astir, and it was with some trepidation as to my reception that I approached the open doorway.
There he stood, busy at his anvil, goodly to look upon in his bare-armed might, and with the sun shining in his yellow hair, a veritable son of Anak. He might have been some hero, or demigod come back from that dim age when angels wooed the daughters of men, rather than a village blacksmith, and a very sulky one at that; for though he must have been aware of my presence, he never glanced up or gave the slightest sign of welcome, or the reverse.
Now, as I watched, I noticed a certain slowness—a heaviness in all his movements—together with a listless, slipshod air which, I judged, was very foreign to him; moreover, as he worked, I thought he hung his head lower than was quite necessary.
"George!" George went on hammering. "George!" said I again. He raised the hammer for another stroke, hesitated, then lifted his head with a jerk, and immediately I knew why he had avoided my eye.