Whom the Gods Destroyed

by Josephine Daskam Bacon

THE TWILIGHT GUESTS

When they left him, in the warm, late afternoon, lying listless on his couch in the porch, they thought he would stay alone there till they came again. His little granddaughter, indeed, felt so sad at deserting him that she ran back and kissed him twice. "To leave Grandpapa alone!" she said. But he was not alone; there came to him strange guests and sweet. And this was the manner of their coming.

As he watched the shadow creeping up the steps, he thought how often he had marked the time by it in the far away days. He remembered how he had tried to keep in the broad sunbeam that lay along the walk, when he used to run home to supper tired and hungry, shouting to his mother that his school was over and out and that he had come—"So hungry, mother dear!" And as he thought of her, slow tears crept from under his old eyelids, and he raised his hand feebly to wipe them away. When he saw clearly again, he started slightly, for up the path, walking in the sunbeam, came a boy. He smiled sweetly, cheerily at the old man, and sat down confidingly, close to the couch. "It is so warm in the sun!" he said.

The old man turned uneasily and looked at him. "Are you Arthur's son?" he asked doubtfully. "My eyes are so dim—I cannot always tell you apart, at first. Are you Arthur's son?"

"No," said the child.

"Are you——" but then the boy looked full in his face and the old man could not take his eyes from that searching smile. And as he looked, there grew around his heart the sweet faint breath of lilac trees, though it was early autumn and not at all the spring. And deep in the child's eyes was so strange a soul—yet so familiar! As he looked yet deeper the lilac scent grew stronger and he dared not turn away his eyes, lest he should lose it. So he listened to the child, who spoke brightly yet gravely, with his head resting against the old man's knee.

"See!" he said, "the lilacs are all out! I took a bunch to school, and the teacher wore them in her dress. Oh, but I grow tired of the school in the mornings, when the birds sing under the window! The brook is all full with the flood water, do you know?"

"Yes," said the old man dreamily, "yes, I know."

"There are pickerel there—I saw one, anyway!" said the boy. "The old one—he lives under the stone all alone. If I could get him, I'd be proud enough! But I never can—I can only catch him on a Friday night when the moon is full, and then I'm not allowed out! The man that weeds the garden told me that. Do you remember?"