The Broad Highway

The world was full of sunshine, the blithe song of birds, and the

sweet, pure breath of waking flowers as I rose next morning, and,

coming to the stream, threw myself down beside it and plunged my

hands and arms and head into the limpid water whose contact

seemed to fill me with a wondrous gladness in keeping with the

world about me.

In a little while I rose, with the water dripping from me, and

having made shift to dry myself upon my neckcloth, nothing else

being available, returned to the cottage.

Above my head I could hear a gentle sound rising and falling with

a rhythmic measure, that told me Donald still slept; so, clapping

on my hat and coat, I started out to my first day's work at the

forge, breakfastless, for the good and sufficient reason that

there was none to be had, but full of the glad pure beauty of the

morning. And I bethought me of the old Psalmist's deathless

words: "Though sorrow endure for a night, yet joy cometh in the morning"

(brave, true words which shall go ringing down the ages to bear

hope and consolation to many a wearied, troubled soul); for now,

as I climbed the steep path where bats had hovered last night,

and turned to look back at the pit which had seemed a place of

horror--behold! it was become a very paradise of quivering green,

spangled with myriad jewels where the dew yet clung.

Indeed, if any man would experience the full ecstasy of being

alive--the joi de vivre as the French have it--let him go out

into the early morning, when the sun is young, and look about him

with a seeing eye.

So, in a little while, with the golden song of a blackbird in my

ears, I turned village-wards, very hungry, yet, nevertheless,

content.

Long before I reached the smithy I could hear the ring of Black

George's hammer, though the village was not yet astir, and it was

with some trepidation as to my reception that I approached the

open doorway.

There he stood, busy at his anvil, goodly to look upon in his

bare-armed might, and with the sun shining in his yellow hair, a

veritable son of Anak. He might have been some hero, or demigod

come back from that dim age when angels wooed the daughters of

men, rather than a village blacksmith, and a very sulky one at

that; for though he must have been aware of my presence, he never

glanced up or gave the slightest sign of welcome, or the reverse.

Now, as I watched, I noticed a certain slowness--a heaviness in

all his movements--together with a listless, slipshod air which,

I judged, was very foreign to him; moreover, as he worked, I

thought he hung his head lower than was quite necessary.