He could get no further. Poor lad! the wonder was that he had not been drowned himself. A negro ploughing in the field near by saw the accident and ran to his help, catching him as he was sinking for the third time. Stella never rose after she went down; her clothing had been entangled in the roots of the beech.
Sorrow for the young life cut off so untimely was deep and universal, and sought to manifest itself in tender ministrations to the brother so cruelly bereaved. But Lindsay shrank from all offices of sympathy, and except for seeking now and then Wayland's silent companionship, bore his grief alone.
The college was too poor to establish the fellowship in Greek, but the adjunct professor in mathematics resigned, and young Cowart was elected to his place, with the proviso that he give two months further study to the subject in the summer school of some university. Wayland decided which by taking him back with him to Cambridge, where he showed the boy an admirable friendship.
Lindsay applied himself to his special studies with the utmost diligence. It was impossible, moreover, that his new surroundings should not appeal to his tastes in many directions; but in spite of his response to these larger opportunities, his friend discerned that the wound which the young man kept so carefully hidden had not, after all these weeks, begun even slightly to heal.
Late on an August night, impelled as he often was to share the solitude which Lindsay affected, he sought him at his lodgings, and not finding him, followed what he knew was a favorite walk with the boy, and came upon him half hidden under the shadows of an elm in the woods that skirted Mount Auburn. "I thought you might be here," he said, taking the place that Lindsay made for him on the seat. Many words were never necessary between them.
The moon was full and the sky cloudless, and for some time they sat in silence, yielding to the tranquil loveliness of the scene and to that inner experience of the soul brooding over each, and more inscrutable than the fathomless vault above them.
"I suppose we shall never get used to a midnight that is still and at the same time lustrous, as this is to-night," Wayland said. "The sense of its uniqueness is as fresh whenever it is spread before us as if we had never seen it before."
It was but a part of what he meant. He was thinking how sorrow, the wide sense of personal loss, was in some way like the pervasiveness, the voiceless speech, of this shadowed radiance around them.
He drew a little nearer the relaxed and slender figure beside his own. "It is of her you are thinking, Lindsay," he said, gently, and mentioning for the first time the young man's loss. "All that you see seems saturated with her memory. I think it will always be so—scenes of exceptional beauty, moments of high emotion, will always bring her back."