The Bird in the Box

by Mary M. Mears

The lad looked doubtful. "It was all little scratchy lines," he said.

Rachel brooded for some minutes over the stove; then she rose. "There won't be anyone here this morning," she announced, "so I sha'n't come back. I've got to take Betty to pasture. Buttercup—all the others—got hold of some sorrel; they're sick."

She went to the door. The fog was so thick that it looked like cotton. The wild roses that bloomed here and there made delicate pink patterns on this white. From the barn the sea no longer could be heard, the complaint of the fog bell could be caught only faintly. Overhead, through the mysterious whiteness, could just be discerned the pale disc of the sun. The girl made her way through the mist as through a tangible substance. She took the path to the beach and the cow followed her placidly, the tall wet grass striking against its sides and its udder swinging like a pendulum. Rachel slipped along the wet path and climbed stealthily to the top of the first rock.

There, sitting on the wreck near the figure-head, was the stranger; but he was not sketching. Instead, his head, from which the cap had fallen, was bent forward and he was carefully burying in the sand what appeared to be the scraps of a letter. When he had finished this operation a kind of humorous relief was manifest all over him. A passenger boat steamed down the bay; a line of smoke followed it. The vessel was invisible, but the smoke lay in the fog a trail of black. The young man turned his head to observe it, and at that instant Rachel started and the cow behind her made a movement.

He looked up.

Poised on the summit of the rock, with the horns of the cow up-curving about her feet, with the fog clinging to her dress of faded blue and undulating about her in clouds, she resembled a figure of the Virgin in a crescent moon.

The pupils of the stranger's eyes, which were of a living, magnetic black dashed with fiery sparks, dilated; and two perpendicular lines, which started from the root of his nose, deepened to grooves on his forehead. He got to his feet, his massive head with its hair thrown back upraised toward her. Touched all over with a subjugating power, a grace more penetrating than beauty, he stared, a sort of animal.

As for Rachel, something of his excitement was communicated to her. For another instant she paused, held there by the mere force of his gaze. Then she turned and descending from the rock, led the cow round into the open space. A close observer might have seen that she wavered slightly, like one who tastes of wine for the first time.

The spell, however, was broken for the stranger. Unconsciously, with his lightning glance, he saw that there was a scratch on the back of one of her hands, that their flesh was rough and that there were freckles across her nose. She was just a strong, healthy, handsome lass; and, with the fickleness of a child, he abruptly turned his attention elsewhere. With excessive care he moved a small box, to which a telephone was attached, to a position of greater safety.

Rachel watched him warily. Growing within her was an odd sense of defiance, and this feeling triumphed finally over her natural shyness.