The Heart

"Was there ever one like her?" repeated Mary Cavendish, and as she

spoke, up she sprang and ran to her sister and flung a fair arm

around her neck, and drew her head to her bosom, and leaned her

cheek against it, and then looked at me with a sidewise glance which

made my heart leap, for curious meanings, of which the innocent

thing had no reckoning, were in it.

I know not what I said. Truly not much, for the mockery of it all

was past my power of dealing with and keeping my respect of self.

I got my fowling-piece from the peg on the wall, and was forth and

ranging the wooded shores, with my eyes intent on the whirring

flight of the birds, and my mind on that problem of the times which

always hath, and doth, and always will, encounter a man who lives

with any understanding of what is about him, but not always as

sorely as in my case, who faced, as it were, an army of

difficulties, bound hand and foot. But after a while the sport in

which I was fairly skilled, and that sense of power which cometh to

one from the proving of his superiority over the life and death of

some weaker creation, and the salt air in my nostrils, gave me, as

it were, a glimpse of a farther horizon than the present one of

Virginia in 1682, and mine own little place in it. Then verily I

could seem to see and scent like some keen hound a smoothness which

should later come from the tangled web of circumstances, and a

greatness which should encompass mine own smallness of perplexity.

When I was wending my way back to Drake Hill, with my gun over

shoulder and some fine birds in hand, I met Sir Humphrey Hyde.

We were near Locust Creek, and the great house stood still and white

in the sunlight, and there was no life around it except for the

distant crawl of toil over the green of the tobacco fields and the

great hum of the bees in the flowering honey locusts which gave,

with the creek, the place its name. Sir Humphrey was coming from the

direction of the house, riding slowly, stooping in the saddle as if

with thought, and I guessed that he had been to see to the safety of

the contraband goods. When he saw me he halted and shouted, in his

hearty, boyish way, "Halloo, halloo, Harry, and what luck?" as if

all there was of moment in the whole world, and Virginia in

particular, was the shooting of birds on a May morning. But then his

face clouded, and he spoke earnestly enough. "Harry, Harry," he

said, in a whisper, though there was no life nearer than the bees,

and they no bearers of secrets, except those of the flowers, "I pray

thee, come back to the hall with me, and let us consult together."