"Ellen says my life is my own, to live as I please, and that not even my mother has a right to dictate to me whether I shall be preacher or soldier," sighed Thomas.
Now I half agreed with Ellen, but the doctrine seemed an irreverent one to a youth of Scotch Irish raising, so I only repeated, "I think you had best obey your mother, Tom," which afforded him small consolation. He answered me with a suppressed groan, and presently went back to the soldiers.
Hot and tired from the day's labors, I decided, after supper, to cool myself by a last drink of my mother's delicious buttermilk. The footpath to the spring wound its careless way down a grassy slope starred with dandelions, and dusted with milky ways of daisies and pale bluets. Apple, pear, and peach trees grew in the angles of the worm fence which separated the garden from the meadow, and they were so full of bloom that they looked like masses of pink and white clouds drifted down to earth. There was a crab apple tree among them, and its elusive fragrance came and went upon the zephyrs which swayed the dandelions and rustled the blossoms upon the trees. The world about my feet was as fair and full of mystic charm as the moon-glorified, star-spangled heaven. The talk, the work, the plans which had filled the last weeks of my life, seemed out of tune with God's purposes, as revealed in nature—out of keeping with His beneficent plans for all His handiwork.
Pondering this strange anomaly, of the tendency of God's creatures to make war continually upon each other, in the midst of a world so fair, so beneficent, and so peaceful—the solemn mystery of death always treading close upon the heels of life—of the desolation always threatening beauty, I passed the springhouse before I knew it, and found myself at the foot of the hill, where the spring breaks forth to fall into a natural basin overhung by a broad, jutting rock. As I raised my eyes to this rock, a vision greeted me which startled me into an instant's consciousness of superstitious terror. Did I see a ghost at last—after all my jeering unbelief? Was that slim shape, wrapped in a white robe standing so motionless on the white rock, the spirit of some Indian maiden, seeking again the haunts where in life she had met her lover?
Of course not; it was only Ellen, for now I saw a hand lifted, to push back the wind blowsed curls from her forehead. Softly I climbed the hill behind her, and stood at her side, but so rapt was she in her own thoughts, she did not hear me till I spoke.
"What are you looking at, Ellen?" I asked.
Had I not thrown my arm quickly about her, she would have sprung from the rock in her startled surprise, yet she did not scream, but regained her poise in an instant, disengaged herself from my arm, and answered me calmly—
"At the moon, Cousin Donald."
"'Tis only a round, bright ball, Ellen; why gaze at it so long and fixedly?"
"'Tis more than a silver ball when one looks at it so. It grows bigger and deeper, and within there are mountains and caverns, and seas and plains; mayhap there are people there who suffer and think as we do. Would you not like to have great wings, Cousin Donald, and fly and fly through the soft blue air, till you reached the moon?"