XIX
ADMIRAL OF NEW ENGLAND
Barefoot and touzle-headed, in the coarse russet and blue homespun of an apprentice, a small boy sidled through the wood. Like a hunted hedgehog, he was ready to run or fight. Where a bright brook slid into the meadows, he stopped, and looked through new leaves at the infinite blue of the sky. Words his grandfather used to read to him came back to his mind.
"Let the inhabitants of the rock sing, let them shout from the top of the mountain."
The Bible which old Joseph Bradford had left to his grandson had been taken away, but no one could take away the memory of it. If he had dared, Will would have shouted aloud then and there. For all his hunger and weariness and dread of the future the strength of the land entered into his young soul. He drank of the clear brook, and let it wash away the soil of his pilgrimage. Then he curled himself in a hollow full of dry leaves, and went to sleep.
When he woke, it was in the edge of the evening. Long shadows pointed like lances among the trees. A horse was cropping the grass in a clearing, and some one beyond the thicket was reading aloud. For an instant he thought himself dreaming of the old cottage at Austerfield—but the voice was young and lightsome.
"Where a man can live at all, there can he live nobly."
The reader stopped and laughed out. A lively snarling came from a burrow not far away, where two badgers were quarrelling conscientiously.
"Just like folks ye be, a-hectorin' and a-fussin'. What's the great question to settle now—predestination or infant baptism?—Why, where under the canopy did you come from, you pint o' cider?"