When the southwest sun hung gilding the clover, over miles of upland I passed, as I had roamed with him, twisting the bronzing sweet-fern from its woody stem, touching the silken milk-weed to set free its floss, halting, breast-deep in crimsoning sumach, to mark the headlong, whirling covey drive through the thorns into the purple dusk.
His hounds bayed from their kennels; there was no one to cast them free; and the red fox throttled the fowls by moonlight; and the lynx squalled in the swamp. His horses trampled the stables till the oak floors, reverberating, hummed thunder; there was no one to bit and bridle them; the moorland clover swayed untrodden in the wind, and the dun stag stamped the crag.
Night and day the river rushed to the sea; night and day the brooks prattled to their pebbles, the slim salmon lay in the pools, the lithe trout stemmed the gravel-rifts; but never a line whistled in the silence, and never a scarlet feather-fly sailed on the waters among the autumn leaves.
Yet, though land and water were lonely without him, I was not lonely, for he walked with me always over the land he had known, and his voice was in the soft, mild winds he loved so well.
With the memory of Silver Heels it was different. Every scented stem of sweet-fern was redolent of her; every grass-blade quivered for her; the winds called her all day long; the brooks whispered, "Where is Silver Heels?"
Through our old play-grounds, in the orchard, on the stairs, through the darkened school-room I followed, haunting the vanished footsteps—gay, light, flying feet of the child I had loved so long, unknowing.
Her stocks stood outside the nursery door; the brass key was on the nail. In her dim chamber hung the scent of lavender, while through the half-closed shutters a faint freshness crept, stirring the ghostly curtains of her bed.
Wistfulness, doubt, tenderness, and sadness came and went like sun-spots on an April day. I waited with delicious dread for her return; I fretted, doubted, hoped, all in the same quick heart-beat, which was not all pain. Only that ghost of happiness which men call hope I knew in those long autumn days alone among the haunts of varied yesterdays.
When the golden month drew near its end, amid the dropping glory of the maple-leaves, one sun-drenched morning I awoke to hear the drums and pipes skirling the march of "Tryon County Men":
"Hark to the horn in the dawn o' the morn!