"Hush!" I heard the pretty gypsy fortuneteller say. "Who is that

laughing?"

"Some profane intruder!" said the goddess Diana. "I shall send an

arrow through his heart, or change him into a stag, as I did Actaeon,

if he peeps from behind the trees!"

"Me take his scalp!" cried the Indian chief, brandishing his tomahawk,

and cutting a great caper in the air.

"I'll root him in the earth with a spell that I have at my tongue's

end!" squeaked Moll Pitcher. "And the green moss shall grow all over

him, before he gets free again!"

"The voice was Miles Coverdale's," said the fiendish fiddler, with a

whisk of his tail and a toss of his horns. "My music has brought him

hither. He is always ready to dance to the Devil's tune!"

Thus put on the right track, they all recognized the voice at once, and

set up a simultaneous shout.

"Miles! Miles! Miles Coverdale, where are you?" they cried. "Zenobia!

Queen Zenobia! here is one of your vassals lurking in the wood.

Command him to approach and pay his duty!"

The whole fantastic rabble forthwith streamed off in pursuit of me, so

that I was like a mad poet hunted by chimeras. Having fairly the start

of them, however, I succeeded in making my escape, and soon left their

merriment and riot at a good distance in the rear. Its fainter tones

assumed a kind of mournfulness, and were finally lost in the hush and

solemnity of the wood. In my haste, I stumbled over a heap of logs and

sticks that had been cut for firewood, a great while ago, by some

former possessor of the soil, and piled up square, in order to be

carted or sledded away to the farmhouse.

But, being forgotten, they

had lain there perhaps fifty years, and possibly much longer; until, by

the accumulation of moss, and the leaves falling over them, and

decaying there, from autumn to autumn, a green mound was formed, in

which the softened outline of the woodpile was still perceptible. In

the fitful mood that then swayed my mind, I found something strangely

affecting in this simple circumstance. I imagined the long-dead

woodman, and his long-dead wife and children, coming out of their chill

graves, and essaying to make a fire with this heap of mossy fuel!

From this spot I strayed onward, quite lost in reverie, and neither

knew nor cared whither I was going, until a low, soft, well-remembered

voice spoke, at a little distance.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024