The Choir Invisible

When he awoke late, he stretched his big arms drowsily out before his face

with a gesture like that of a swimmer parting the water: he was in truth

making his way out of a fathomless, moonlit sea of dreams to the shores of

reality. Broad daylight startled him with its sheer blinding revelation of

the material world, as the foot of a swimmer, long used to the yielding

pavements of the ocean, touches with surprise the first rock and sand.

He sprang up, bathed, dressed, and stepped out into the crystalline

freshness of the morning. He was glowing with his exercise, at peace with

himself and with all men, and so strong in the exuberance of his manhood

that he felt he could have leaped over into the east, shouldered the sun,

and run gaily, impatiently, with it up the sky. How could he wait to see Amy

until it went up its long slow way and then down again to its setting? A

powerful young lion may some time have appeared thus at daybreak on the edge

of a jungle and measured the stretches of sand to be crossed before he could

reach an oasis where memory told him was the lurking-place of love.

It was still early. The first smoke curled upward from the chimneys of the

town; the melodious tinkle of bells reached his ear as the cows passed from

the milking to the outlying ranges deep in their wild verdure. Even as he

stood surveying the scene, along the path which ran close to his cabin came

a bare-headed, nutbrown pioneer girl, whose close-fitting dress of white

homespun revealed the rounded outlines of her figure. She had gathered up

the skirt which was short, to keep it from the tops of the wet weeds. Her

bare, beautiful feet were pink with the cold dew.

Forgotten, her slow fat cows had passed on far ahead; for at her side, wooing her with drooping

lashes while the earth was still flushed with the morn, strolled a young

Indian fighter, swarthy, lean tall, wild. His long thigh boots of thin

deer-hide, open at the hips, were ornamented with a scarlet fringe and

rattled musically with the hoofs of fawns and the spurs of the wild turkey;

his gray racoonskin cap was adorned with the wings of the hawk and the

scarlet tanager.

The magnificent young, warrior lifted his cap to the school-master with a

quiet laugh; and the girl smiled at him and shook a warning finger to remind

him he was not to betray them. He smiled back with a deprecating gesture to

signify that he could be trusted. He would have liked it better if he could

have said more plainly that he too had the same occupation now; and as he

gazed after them, lingering along the path side by side, the long-stifled

cravings of his heart rose to his unworldly, passionate eyes: he all but

wished that Amy also milked the cows at early morning and drove them out to

pasture.