It was a glorious day, whose sunshine might have found its way even into his black heart. Oh! how soft, and mellow, and pure, the hurricane of the last night had left it! Not a cloud in the sky, not a breath to ripple the water, or to wave the long trailing locks of the hoary willows, which nodded over its banks.
Rust looked about him, with a bewildered gaze, until his eye became fixed upon the water. ‘It’s very quiet, very quiet,’ said he; ‘I wonder if a man, once engulfed in it, feels peace.’ He pressed his hand to his breast, and muttered: ‘Here it is gone forever!’
He loitered listlessly on, under the trees. His step was feeble; and he stooped and tottered, as if decrepid. He stopped again, shook his head, and went on, looking upon the ground, and at times long and wistfully at the river.
An old man, leaning on a stout cane, who had been watching him, at last came up. Raising his hat, as he did so, he said:
‘You seem, like myself, to be an admirer of this noble river?’
Rust looked up at him sharply, ready to gather in his energies, if necessary. But there was nothing in the mild, dignified face of the speaker to invite suspicion, and he replied in a feeble tone:
‘Yes, yes; it is a noble river.’
‘I’ve seen many, in my long life,’ said the other, ‘and have never met its equal.’
Rust paused, as if he did not hear him, and then continued in a musing tone:
‘How smooth it is! how calm! Many have found peace there, who never found it in life. Drowning’s an easy death, I’m told.’