CHAPTER VII.
A DESPERATE ENCOUNTER.
All that long, silent afternoon, he wandered through the woods, the fields and the meadows. The cool shadows of the forest enfolded him, and the balsamic fragrance of spruce and pine and juniper soothed his troubled spirit. He sat on a decaying log, listening to the chatter of a squirrel, and hearing the occasional soft pat of the first-falling acorns. He noted the spots where Jack Frost had thus early begun his work of painting the leaves pink and crimson and gold. In a thicket he saw the scarlet gleam of hawthorne berries.
Beside Silver Brook, which ran down through the border of the woods, he paused to listen to the tinkle and gurgle of the water. There the blackberried moonseed clambered over the underbrush. When he crossed the brook and pushed on through this undergrowth, his feet and ankles were wet by water spilled from many hooded pitcher plants. Near the edge of the woods, with a sudden booming whir of wings that made his heart jump, a partridge flew up and went diving away into the deeper forest.
At the border of the woods, where meadow and marshland began, he discovered clusters of pale-blue asters mingling with masses of rose-purple blazing star. Before him he sent scurrying a flight of robins, driven from their feast of pigeon berries amid the wine-stained pokeweed leaves.
The sun leaned low to the west and the day drew toward a peaceful close. He seemed to forget for brief periods his misfortune and wretchedness, but he could not put his bitter thoughts aside for long, and whenever he tried to do so, they simply slunk in the background, to come swarming upon him again at the first opportunity. At best, it was a wretched afternoon he spent with them.
He had escaped facing disgrace and expulsion by declining to return to the academy that afternoon; but his trunk and clothes were at Mrs. Jones’ and he must get them, which led him, as night approached, to turn back toward the village.
On the southern slope of Turkey Hill he lingered, with the valley and the village below him. The sunshine gilded a church spire amid the oaks, and in its yard of maples he could see the roof and belfry of the academy.
The afternoon session was over by this time, and from that elevation Ben could look down on the fenced football field, where he beheld the boys already at practice. Once the still air brought their voices to him even from that distance. His heart swelled with a sense of injustice and wrong, until it seemed to fill his chest in a stifling manner.