"How the red star hangs to the moon's white horn."
There was no answer, for his companion was awed to utter silence.
One day, Bunker Hill, a humped-back and unhappy woman of uncertain ways, passed through the crowd in the Forks. Some of the rough men laughed and made remarks. This boy was there also. Lifting his eyes to one of these men at his side, he said:
"God has made some women a little plain, in order that he might have some women that are wholly good."
These things began to be noised about. All things have their culmination. Even the epizootic has one worst day. Things only go so far. Rockets only rise so high, then they explode, and all is dark and still.
The Judge stood straddled out before the roaring fire of the Howling Wilderness one night, tilting up the tails of his coat with his two hands which he had turned in behind him, as he stood there warming the upper ends of his short legs, and listening to these questions and the comments of the men. At last, he seemed to have an inspiration, and tilting forward on his toes, and bringing his head very low down, and his coat-tails very high up, he said, solemnly:
"Fellow-citizens, it's a poet."
Then bringing out his right hand, and reaching it high in the air, as he poised on his right leg:
"In this glorious climate of Californy—"
"Be gad, it is!" cried an Irishman, jumping up, "a Bryan! A poet, a rale, live, Lord O'Bryan."