"Tell Uncle I did not stop till the job was done, nor break my promise; for the year is over now, and it was so sweet to write again that I forgot to go home till it was too late."
"O Nat, not too late. You shall work no more, but write all day, without a care. We have been too hard upon you, and you too patient with our blindness. Dear lad, forgive us, and come home to live a happier year than this has been," cried Ruth, trying with remorseful tenderness to keep the delicate spirit that was escaping from her hold, like the butterfly that died among her roses with broken wings.
But Nat had no desire to stay; for he was going home, to feel hunger, thirst, and weariness no more, to find a love Ruth could not give, and to change earth's prose to heaven's immortal poetry. Yet he lingered on the threshold to look back and whisper gently: "It is better so, sweetheart. There was no place for me here, and I was homesick for my own friends and country. I'm going to find them, and I'm quite content. Forget me and be happy; or remember me only in the springtime, when the world is loveliest and my birthday comes. See, this is all I had to give you; but my heart was in it."
He tried to lift the unfinished song and give it to her; but it fluttered down upon his breast, and the violets dropped after, lying there unstirred by any breath, for with the words a shadow deeper than that twilight laid upon the fields stole over the face on Ruth's bosom, and all the glory of the sunset sky could only touch it with a pathetic peace, as the poet lay asleep beside the river.
He lies there still, the legend says, under the low green mound, where violets bloom earliest, where the old willows drop their golden tassels in the spring, and blackbirds fill the air with their melodious ecstasy. No song of his lived after him; no trace of him remains, except that nameless grave; and few ever heard of one who came and went like the snow for which they christened him. Yet it seems as if his gentle ghost still haunted those sunny meadows, still listened to the enchanted river, and touched with some mysterious charm the places that knew him once. For strangers find a soft attraction in the quiet landscape; lovers seek those green solitudes to tell the story that is always new; and poets muse beside the shadowy stream, hearing, as he heard, a call to live the life that lifts them highest by unwavering fidelity to the gift Heaven sends.
LETTY'S TRAMP.
Letty sat on the doorstep one breezy summer day, looking down the road and wishing with all her heart that something pleasant would happen. She often did this; and one of her earliest delights when a lonely child was to sit there with a fairy book upon her knee, waiting and watching in all good faith for something wonderful to happen.
In those days, Cinderella's golden coach dashing round the corner to carry her away was the favorite dream; but at eighteen one thinks more of the prince than either golden coach or splendid ball. But no prince as yet had cut his way through the grove of "laylocks" round the gate, and the little beauty still dreamed waking dreams on the doorstep, with her work forgotten in her lap.
Behind her in the quaint, quiet room Aunt Liddy dozed in her easy chair, the clock ticked, the bird chirped, old Bran snapped lazily at the flies, and nothing else broke the hush that brooded over the place. It was always so, and Letty often felt as if an earthquake would be a blessed relief to the dreadful monotony of her life.