The sunset sea breeze rustled the stooping boughs. Arrows of greenish gold, tipped with fire, were shot at random between the leaves at the sleeping pair. Hetty was very pale, but the grieving droop of the facial lines, the slight fullness of the lower lip, and the slow curve of the arm thrown above her head made her seem like a child. She looked what she was, fairly tired out—weariness so intense that it would have chased slumber from the eyelids of an older sufferer. She had cried herself to sleep, Thor’s presence giving the sense of protecting companionship the child feels in his mother’s nearness. The cool breath of the approaching twilight, the grateful shade, and Sabbath stillness did the rest.
Now and then a long, broken sigh heaved her chest, and ran through her body. There was the glisten of tiny crystals upon her eyelashes. Once she sobbed aloud, and Thor moved uneasily and sighed sympathetically. By and by he began to beat his tail gently against the turf, his beautiful eyes gleamed glad and wistful, but he did not offer to lift his head. Hetty patted it in her sleep, and left her hand there.
She and Thor were walking over a wilderness prairie. The coarse grass flaunted up to her chin, and she would have lost the dog had she not wound her fingers in his hair. Such a long, tiresome, toilsome way it was, and the grass so stiff and strong! Sometimes it knotted about her ankles; sometimes the beards struck like whips across her face. A bitter wind was blowing, and stung her eyes to watering. In passing it lashed the grass into surges that boomed like the sea.
Miles and miles away an orange sunset burned luridly upon the horizon, and right between her and it was a floating figure, moving majestically onward. A mantle blew back in the bitter wind until she could almost touch the hem; a confusing flutter of drapery masked the head and shoulders; the face was set steadfastly westward and kept away from her. At long intervals a hand was tossed clear of the white foldings and beckoned her to follow.
“And follow I will!” she said, between her set teeth, to herself and to Thor, “I will follow until I overtake him or die!”
And all the while the blasting wind hissed in her hair and howled in the pampas grasses, and her feet were sore and bleeding; her limbs failed under her; her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth with dryness; her heart beat faint——
Hark! At the upward fling of her leader’s arm music rained down from heaven, and the earth made joyous response; strong, exultant strains, like an organ peal, and such vibrant melodious chimes as Bunyan heard when all the bells of the holy city rang together for joy. The majestic, floating figure turned to lean toward her with outstretched arms, and eyes that gazed into hers as she had vowed they should never look again.
“Oh! I knew it must be you!” She said it aloud, in her rapturous dream. “It could be nobody else! Thank God! Thank God!”
Thor bounded from under her hand....
March Gilchrist’s New York friend was a bachelor cousin, who was always delighted to have “a good fellow” drop in upon him on Sunday evening. March, in the uneasy wretchedness that beset him, honestly intended to visit him when he took the five o’clock train. He wanted to get away from the place for a few hours, he said; away from tormenting associations and possible catechists, and think calmly of the next step to be taken. By the time he reached Jersey City he had discovered that he was trying to get away from himself and not from his home; moreover, that he wanted neither dinner nor the society of the genial celibate. He stepped from the train, turned into the station restaurant, sat down at the table he had occupied on the day he landed from the City of Rome and missed the noon train, and ordered at random something to eat.