Come on! Fill the smithy and the yard with your 206 horses, and I’ll shoe all of them! Block the roads and the by-ways with your wagons and buggies;––what care I for toil? Heap your broken reapers and binders a mountain high, and I’ll stand on top of them before nightfall, with my hammer held defiantly to the heavens and shout “Excelsior, the work is done.” The Fairy Princess has stopped in her procession; she looks my way; she smiles: her galloping courier brings a perfumed favour; she beckons me. Ah, surely! what a Paradise, after all, is this we live in!
In a sweet little world of dreams––in which even a blacksmith may live at times––Phil battled with his tasks and overcame them one by one.
And it was little he cared about the week’s growth of beard that sat on his gaunt face, or for the sweat that ran over his forehead and splashed to his great, bared chest. Pride did not chide him for hands that were horny and begrimed, nor for arms that were red and scarred from the bite of flying sparks.
But it was thus that the lady of his dreams found him, as she wafted in from a gallop over the ranges, with a shoe in her hand and leading a horse that wore only three.
A smile was on her happy face, her cheeks were aglow and her eyes were dancing in childish delight.
Little wonder then that Phil’s heart stopped, then raced with all the mad fury of a runaway; little wonder his face grew pale and his eyes gleamed as he moved back against the wall beside his furnace.
And Eileen’s merry smile faded away like the heat of an Indian Summer’s day before the cool of the approaching night. She stared with widening eyes at the figure before her, for she saw, not the young, sturdy, country blacksmith, but a picture of the past, a fugitive from 207 the police, a gaunt tired man, spent and almost beaten, seeking sanctuary.
And on this occasion, she did not take time to consider how much the man before her still craved for sanctuary.
Her lips parted in fear. Her hand went to her heart and she stepped slowly backward toward the door.
“Oh,––oh,––oh!” was all she uttered.