The Everlasting Whisper

Though she knew little more of cookery than of nursing, she set about the very sensible task of making a strong broth. The proper nourishment that had seemed so impossible a moment ago was now ready at hand.

"God is good," she whispered, a sudden new gush of love and reverence in her heart. "He will help me now."

For herself, since her own strength must be kept up, she cooked a strip of the meat on the coals. Then she went to King and for a long time sat at his side, her eyes upon his white face, her hand clasping his. Again and again she stooped and laid her cheek against the strong but now lax fingers; once she put her lips to his forehead; when she sat back her eyes were wet and the slow tears welled up and trickled unnoticed down her cheeks. But they were tears which left the heart sweetened, tears of tenderness, of gratitude, of sympathy and love.

As the night wore on, since she was determined that King should not be chilled, her fire consumed a great part of the wood. More wood must be brought; to-night or in the morning. She went to the canvas flap and looked out. There were clouds, but also there were wide rifts through which the stars blazed in all of that glorious crystalline beauty of the stars of the winter Sierra. While she stood looking out the moon, almost at the full, gilded a cloud edge, and after a moment broke through like an augury of joy. Stars and moon made the wilderness over into a land of fairy; at ten million points the snow caught the light, flashing it back as though the white robe spread over the solitudes were sewn with gems. Never had the world looked so white as now with a rare light shining upon its smooth purity; it was clean and fresh, gloriously spotless. Where black shadows lay they but accentuated the whiteness across which they fell.

Out of this sleeping, enchanted land, rising above it, sweeping across it, a low voice like a whisper came to her, a whisper in her ears that became a song in her heart. The snow that had, clung to the pines, muting their needles and stilling their branches, had dropped on during the day. Now the night wind which drove the clouds lingered through the pine tops and set them swaying gently in the vast, harmonic rhythm which is like the surging of a distant ocean. The everlasting whisper of the pines, that ancient hushed voice which through the countless centuries has never been still save when briefly silenced by the snow; which had borne its message to Gloria when on that first day she went with Mark King into the mountains; which many a time had mingled with her fancies, tingeing them, leading her to dream of another life than that of city streets; which now, suddenly, set chords vibrating softly in her own bosom. All these days it had been stilled; had it called her ears would have been deaf to it.