The Choir Invisible

The glimmer of gray dawn at last and he had never moved from his seat. A

fine, drizzling rain had set in. Clouds of mist brushed against the walls

of his cabin. In the stillness he could hear the big trees shedding their

drops from leaf to bending leaf and the musical tinkle of these as they took

their last leap into little pools below.

With the chilliness which misery brings he got up at last and wrapped his

weather-coat about him. If it were only day when he could go to his work and

try to forget! Restless, sleepless, unable to read, tired of sitting, driven

on by the desire to get rid of his own thoughts, he started out to walk.

As he passed his school-house he noticed that the door of it, always

fastened by a simple latch, now stood open; and he went over to see if

everything inside were in order. All his life, when any trouble had come

upon him, he had quickly returned to his nearest post of duty like a

soldier; and once in the school-room now, he threw himself down in his chair

with the sudden feeling that here in his familiar work he must still find

his home--the home of his mind and his affections--as so long in the past.

The mere aspect of the poor bare place had never been so kind. The very

walls appeared to open to him like a refuge, to enfold themselves around him

with friendly strength and understanding.

He sat at the upper end of the room, gazing blankly through the doorway at

the gray light and clouds of white mist trailing. Once an object came into

the field of his vision. At the first glimpse he thought it a dog--long,

lean, skulking, prowling, tawny--on the scent of his tracks. Then the mist

passed over it.

When he beheld it again it had approached nearer and was

creeping rapidly toward the door. His listless eyes grew fascinated by its

motions--its litheness, suppleness, grace, stealth, exquisite caution. Never

before had he seen a dog with the step of a cat. A second time the fog

closed over it, and then, advancing right out of the cloud with more

swiftness, more cunning, its large feet falling as lightly as flakes of

snow, the weight of its huge body borne forward as noiselessly as the

trailing mist, it came straight on. It reached the hickory block, which

formed the doorstep; it paused there an instant, with its fore quarters in

the doorway, one fore foot raised, the end of its long tail waving; and then

it stole just over the threshold and crouched, its head pressed down until

its long, whitish throat lay on the floor; its short, jagged ears set

forward stiffly like the broken points of a javelin; its dilated eye blazing

with steady green fire--as still as death. And then with his blood become as

ice in his veins from horror and all the strength gone out of him in a

deathlike faintness, the school- master realized that he was face to face

unarmed with a cougar, gaunt with famine and come for its kill.