The Choir Invisible

The first day that John felt strong enough to walk as far as that end of the

town, he was pulling himself unsteadily past the shop when he saw Peter and

turned in to rest and chat.The young blacksmith refused to speak to him.

"Peter!" said John with a sad, shaky voice, holding out his hand, "have I

changed so much? Don't you know me?"

"Yes; I know you," said Peter. "I wish I didn't."

"I don't think I recognize you any more," replied John, after a moment of

silence. "What's the matter?"

"Oh, you get along," said Peter. "Clear out!"

John went inside and drank a gourd of water out of Peter's cool bucket, came

back with a stool and sat down squarely before him.

"Now look here," he said with the candour which was always the first law of

nature with him, "what have I done to you?"

Peter would neither look nor speak; but being powerless before kindness, he

was beginning to break down.

"Out with it," said John. "What have I done?""You know what you've said."

"What have I said about you?" asked John, now perceiving that some mischief

had been at work here. "Who told you I had said anything about you?"

"It's no use for you to deny it."

"Who told you?"

"O'Bannon!"

"O'Bannon!" exclaimed John with a frown. "I've never talked to O'Bannon

about you--about anything."

"You haven't abused me?" said Peter, wheeling on the schoolmaster, eyes and

face and voice full of the suffering of his wounded self-love and of his

wounded affection.

"I hope I've abused nobody!" said John proudly.

"Come in here!" cried Peter, springing up and hurrying into his shop.

Near the door stood a walnut tree with wide-spreading branches wearing the

fresh plumes of late May, plumes that hung down over the door and across the

windows, suffusing the interior with a soft twilight of green and brown

shadows. A shaft of sunbeams penetrating a crevice fell on the white neck of

a yellow collie that lay on the ground with his head on his paws, his eyes

fixed reproachfully on the heels of the horse outside, his ears turned back

toward his master. Beside him a box had been kicked over: tools and shoes

scattered. A faint line of blue smoke sagged from the dying coals of the

forge toward the door, creeping across the anvil bright as if tipped with

silver. And in one of the darkest corners of the shop, near a bucket of

water in which floated a huge brown gourd, Peter and John sat on a bench

while the story of O'Bannon's mischief-making was begun and finished. It was

told by Peter with much cordial rubbing of his elbows in the palms of his

hands and much light-hearted smoothing of his apron over his knees. At times

a cloud, passing beneath the sun, threw the shop into heavier shadow; and

then the school-master's dark figure faded into the tone of the sooty wall

behind him and only his face, with the contrast of its white linen collar

below and the bare discernible lights of his auburn hair above--his face,

proud, resolute, astounded, pallid, suffering--started out of the gloom like

a portrait from an old canvas.