“The tender Shepherd?”
“Ay,” said he; “the Shepherd o’ the lambs.”
And now the lower stars were paling in a far-off flush of light. I had been disquieted, but was by this waxing glow made glad that the sea and rock of the world were to lie uncovered of their shadows while yet I was awake. ’Twas a childish prayer––too simple in terms and petition (as some may think) for the lad that was I to utter, grown tall and broad and lusty for my years; but how sufficient (I recall) to still the fears of night! They who are grown lads, like the lad that was I, got somewhat beyond the years of tenderness, cling within their hearts to all the lost privileges of love they must by tradition affect to despise. My prayer for the little lamb that was I presented no aspect of incongruity to my uncle; it left him silent and solemnly abstracted: the man being cast into a heavy muse upon its content, his head fallen over his breast, as was his habit, and his great gray brows drawn down. How still the night––how cold and clear: how unfeeling in this frosty calm and silence, save, afar, where the little stars winked their kindly cognizance of the wakeful dwellers 61 of the earth! I sat up in my bed, peering through the window, to catch the first glint of the moon and to watch her rise dripping, as I used to fancy, from the depths of the sea.
“But they stray!” my uncle complained.
’Twas an utterance most strange. “Uncle Nick,” I asked, “what is it that strays?”
“The feet o’ children,” he answered.
By this I was troubled.
“They stray,” he repeated. “Ay; ’tis as though the Shepherd minded not at all.”
“Will my feet stray?”