The sleepy children's suppers were brought up, and they were snug in bed before their elders were prepared for their meal. The gentlemen were in the yard, looking at the belvidere.
"Your beacon puzzled us considerably," said Charley to Ida. "It appeared to be upon the summit of a huge, shapeless height. We thought we had lost our road and wandered off to the Enchanted Mountains."
"Or that a remnant of Ghebers had an asylum among these hills," said Mr. Lacy. "You should have heard Charley's
'Fierce and high
The death-pile blued into the sky,
And far away, o'er rock and flood,
Its melancholy radiance sent!'"
"Was I the only rhapsodizer?" retorted Charley. "Who said, when a figure passed before the light—
"Hafed, like a vision, stood
Revealed before the burning pyre,
Tall, shadowy, like a Spirit of Fire,
Shrined in its own grand element?'"
"Why, that was uncle Will!" exclaimed Emma.
Amid the burst of laughter that replied, Charley pronounced poetry—"done."
"And having descended to real life, perhaps you do not object to more substantial food," said Ida. On the way to the house, some one took her hand.
"Has my impatience offended? I could not wait!" said a hasty whisper.