Burned Bridges

An hour or so later he lifted his eyes from the printed page at a

distant boom of thunder. The advanced edge of a black cloudbank rolling

swiftly up from the east was already dimming the brassy glare of the

sun. He watched the swift oncoming of the storm. With astonishing

rapidity the dark mass resolved itself into a gray, obscuring streak of

rain riven by vivid flashes of lightning. Carr laid down his book and

refilled his pipe while he gazed on this common phenomenon of the

dog-days. It swept up and passed over the village of Lone Moose as a

sprinkling wagon passes over a city street. The downpour was accompanied

by crashing detonations that sent the village dogs howling to cover.

With the same uncanny swiftness of gathering so it passed, leaving

behind a pleasant coolness in the air, clean smells of the washed earth

arising. The sun blazed out again. A million rain-pearls hung glistening

on the blades of grass in the meadow before Sam Carr's house.

With the passing of the thunder shower, before Carr left off his

contemplation of the freshened beauty of meadow and woods, a man and a

woman emerged from the spruce forest on the farther side of the meadow.

They walked a little way in the open, stopped for a minute, facing each

other. Their conversation ended with a sudden quick gesture by the man.

Turning, they came on again toward Carr's house. Sam Carr's clear gray

eyes lit up. The ghost of a smile hovered about his bearded lips. He

watched them approach with that same quizzical expression, a mixture, if

one gauged his look aright, of pleasure and pride and expectation.

They were young as years go, the pair that walked slowly up to the

cabin. The man was certainly still in his twenties, of medium height,

compactly muscular, a good-looking specimen of pure Anglo-Saxon manhood.

The girl was a flower in perfect bloom, fresh-colored, slender and

pliant as a willow, with all of the willow's grace in every movement.

For all the twenty-odd years between them, and the gulf of sex

differentiation, there was in her glance and bearing much of the

middle-aged man who sat on the porch with a book across his knees and a

clay pipe in his mouth. It did not lie in facial resemblance. It was

more subtle than likeness of feature. Perhaps it was because of their

eyes, alike deep gray, wide and expressive, lifted always to meet

another's in level unembarrassed frankness.

They halted at the edge of the porch. The girl sat down. The young man

nodded to Carr. Though they had but lately been fair in the path of the

thunderstorm they had escaped a wetting. The girl's eyes followed her

father's glance, seemed to read his thought.