“Like the man of the Bastille.”
“Yes. I shut the cage and took it down to the river. There I left it, open. Next day I saw him perched above it on a dead tamarack, swinging in a wild wind. The day after he was gone.”
“I wonder if he regrets the cage and the certainty of full diet.”
“Ah! liberty is very sweet. I sometimes wonder whether, when this earthly cage is opened, we shall linger about it like my hawk.”
For a time they speed onward, silent, as the shadows grew across the waters. Said Lyndsay, at length: “One more thing to note: the sun is down, but see how that huge array of gleaming, seried tree-trunks, away up on the hilltops, takes the light we have lost.”
Rose looked, and saw on the far summits that the multitudinous tree-stems were of a lovely lemon yellow, and below, where their lines crossed at the intercepting angles of two slopes, of a pallid lilac.
“I think we have learned to use our eyes to-day. No need to paddle here. Take a rest. We are going at the rate of five miles an hour.”
In the gathering dusk they flitted past the camp-fires on the island, and soon were at their cabin door.
“Shall I ever have another day like this?” said Rose, as she ran up the steps. “Thank you, Pardy.”