The Choir Invisible

As he said this, his manner, hitherto full of humour and vivacity, turned

grave, and his voice, sinking to a lower tone, became charged with

sweetness. It was the voice in which one refined and sincere soul confides

to another refined and sincere soul the secret of some new happiness that

has come to it.

But noticing the negro lad, who had paused in his work several paces off and

stood watching them, he said to her: "May I have a drink?"

She turned to the negro:"Go to the spring-house and bring some water."The

lad moved away, smiling to himself and shaking his head.

"He has broken all my pitchers," she added. "To-day I had to send my last

roll of linen to town by Amy to buy more queen's-ware. The moss will grow on

the bucket before he gets back."

When the boy was out of hearing, she turned again to him: "What is it? Tell me quickly."

"I have had news from Philadelphia. The case is at last decided in favour of

the heirs, and I come at once into possession of my share. It may be eight

or ten thousand dollars." His voice trembled a little despite himself.

She took his hands in hers with a warm, close pressure, and tears of joy

sprang to her eyes.

The whole of his bare, bleak life was known to her; its half-starved

beginning; its early merciless buffeting; the upheaval of vast circumstance

in the revolutionary history of the times by which he had again and again

been thrown back upon his own undefended strength; and stealthily following

him from place to place, always closing around him, always seeking to

strangle him, or to poison him in some vital spot, that most silent, subtle

serpent of life--Poverty. Knowing this, and knowing also the man he had

become, she would in secret sometimes liken him to one of those rare unions

of delicacy and hardihood which in the world of wild flowers Nature refuses

to bring forth except from the cranny of a cold rock. Its home is the

battle-field of black roaring tempests; the red lightnings play among its

roots ; all night seamless snow-drifts are woven around its heart; no bee

ever rises to it from the valley below where the green spring is kneeling;

no morning bird ever soars past it with observant song; but in due time,

with unswerving obedience to a law of beauty unfolding from within, it sets

forth its perfect leaves and strains its steadfast face toward the sun.

These paltry thousands! She realized that they would lift from him the

burden of debts that he had assumed, and give him, without further waiting,

the libertyof his powers and the opportunities of the world."God bless you!"

She said with trembling lips. "It makes me happier than it does you. No one

else in the whole world is as glad as I am."Silence fell upon them. Both

were thinking, but in very different ways--of the changes that would now

take place in his life.