As it fell out I was in my shop by the river at work on a cedar chest. I was garbed in a dark-blue flannel shirt and blue overalls, and needed a hair-cut sadly. I heard a sound and looked up. “She has come!” I said to myself. “Out of the land of dreams she has come to me!”
A young woman stood before me. The face I saw was oval and flawless. The cheeks were a delicate pink. Her lips were vivid, her eyes luminous as stars. Her silky, lustrous hair was bound with a broad band of blue ribbon. Although her riding skirt was torn, her blouse soiled, although she was dusty and disheveled, with shadows of weariness about her splendid eyes, her manner was that of a young princess as she addressed me.
“This place is for sale, I understand?”
I had not thought of selling the few acres that remained of the hundred-and-sixty-acre homestead I had taken up eight years before; but I was so overcome with awe and confusion, that I stammered forth:
“Why, no—that is, I think not! I shall sell some time, I dare say.”
Her face showed a flash of amusement and then grew thoughtful.
“It is a desirable place,” she murmured, half to herself.
I knew then she had come to the shop by the yew path—the path that runs beneath the trailing yews and winds in and out like a purple-brown ribbon near the spring, where the moss is downy and green, and the bracken is high, and the breeze makes a sibilant sound in the rushes. I straightened my shoulders, laid aside my plane, and rolled down my sleeves. Thus far I had not fully appraised my visitor, having fallen a prey to the creeping paralysis of shyness at my first glance, but now, grown bolder, I stole a hardier look at her face. I saw the scarlet lips, the brilliant eyes, and the ivory forehead beneath the midnight hair. I saw the rose tint on her cheek, the tan on her tender throat where the rolled-back collar left it bare. I saw—and I breathed: “God help me!” deep in my heart; and there must have crept a warmth that was disquieting into my gaze, for she lowered her eyes swiftly, and slid her hand, in its riding glove, caressingly along the smooth surface of the cedar chest between us.
“What beautiful wood,” she said softly. “You are a carpenter—a craftsman,” she amended. “How wonderful to work with wood like this.”
“Christ was a carpenter,” a voice—a wee voice announced from behind us. Joey had stolen into the shop through the rear window as was his custom, and curled up on my work bench among the shavings.