In far wild groves below the tropic line
To leave old memories of this land of mine.
I have fought
This vague mysterious power that flings me forth
Into the north.
But all in vain, when flutes of April blow,
The immemorial longing lures me, and I go!”
Then, abandoning for the time the fight against the lure of a voice beyond her ken and a memory in which sweetness and pain were inextricably blended, she gave herself wholly up to the spell of the present.
Another happening that day lent wings to her spirit, though the thing was both practical and humble. Bisbee, the stableman, upon the strength of having seen the Sign of the Fox when it was at the blacksmith’s being framed in iron (for the rings had not held), ordered a sign for his newly completed stable, offering the generous price (to him) of twenty-five dollars for it, he to furnish the wood.
“There’s a regular horse painter over in Gordon will do me a race-horse in a sulky, driver included, for fifteen,” said Bisbee, a big, jolly, liberal man, whose rosy cheeks plainly told that they were not made in New England; “but he’s done that same one fer everybody within ten miles. Besides, what sense in a race-horse sign fer a family stable, say I? Give me something safe and assuring, yet not too safe!”