Then, after a moment’s thought, he added: “How silly I am to be so frightened! The dog on the wharf probably waked and barked.”
Then he finished his arrangement of Gill’s disfigured remains, and closing all the doors, threw himself upon his mattress to sleep off the fatigue of the past night and gain strength for the coming one.
Schumacker and his Daughter in the Prison Garden.
Photo-Etching.—From drawing by Démarest.
IX.
Juliet. Oh, think’st thou we shall ever meet again?
Romeo. I doubt it not: and all these woes shall serve
For sweet discourses in our time to come.
Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet.
THE signal-light at Munkholm castle had just been extinguished, and in its place the sailor entering Throndhjem fjord saw the helmet of the soldier on guard gleam from afar in the beams of the rising sun like a planet moving in its orbit, when Schumacker, leaning on his daughter’s arm, came down as usual into the garden which surrounded his prison. Both had spent a restless night,—the old man unable to sleep, the maiden kept awake by happy thoughts. They walked in silence for a time; then the aged prisoner said, fixing a sad and serious gaze upon the lovely girl:—
“You blush and smile at your own thoughts, Ethel; you are happy, for you have no cause to blush for the past, and you smile at the future.”