Andrew the Glad

Then for a mystic half-hour she sat and let her eyes roam the blue

Harpeth hills in the distance, that were naked and stark save for the

lace traceries of their winter-robbed trees. As the sun sank a soft rose

purple shot through the blue and the mists of the valley rose higher

about the bared breasts of the old ridge.

And because of the stillness and beauty of the place and hour, Caroline

Darrah began, as women will if the opportunity only so slightly invites

them, to dream--until a crackle in a thicket opposite her perch

distracted her attention and sent her head up with a little start. In a

second she found herself looking across the chatty little stream straight

into the eyes of Andrew Sevier, in which she found an expression of

having come upon a treasure with distracting suddenness.

"Oh," she said to break the silence which seemed to be settling itself

between them permanently, "I think I must have been dreaming and you

crashed right in. I--I--"

"Are you sure you are not the dream itself--just come true?" demanded the

poet in a matter-of-fact tone, as if he were asking the time of day or

the trail home.

"I don't think I am, in fact I'm sure," she answered with a break in her

curled lips. "The dream is a bridge, a beautiful bridge, and I've been

seeing it grow for minutes and minutes. One end of it rests down there

by that broken log--see where the little knoll swells up from the

field?--and it stretches in a beautiful strong arch until it seems to cut

across that broken-backed old hill in the distance. And then it falls

across--but I don't know where to put the other end of it--the ground

sinks so--it might wobble. I don't want my bridge to wobble."

Her tone was expressive of a real distress as she looked at him in

appealing confusion. And in his eyes she found the dawn of an amused

wonder, almost consternation. Slowly over his face there spread a deep

flush and his lips were indrawn with a quick breath.

"Wait a minute, I'll show you," he said in almost an undertone. He swung

himself across the creek on a couple of stones, climbed up the boulder

and seated himself at her side. Then he drew a sketch-book from his

pocket and spread it open on the slab before them.

There it was--the dream bridge! It rose in a fine strong curve from the

little knoll, spanned across the distant ridge and fell to the opposite

bank on to a broad support that braced itself against a rock ledge. It

was as fine a perspective sketch as ever came from the pencil of an

enthusiastic young Beaux Arts.

"Yes," she said with a delighted sigh that was like the slide of the

water over smooth pebbles, "yes, that is what I want it to be, only I

couldn't seem to see how it would rest right away. It is just as I

dreamed it and,"--then she looked at him with startled jeweled eyes.

"Where did I see it--where did you--what does it mean?" she demanded, and

the flush that rose up to the waves of her hair was the reflection of the

one that had stained his face before he came across the stream. "I think

I'm frightened," she added with a little nervous laugh.