George Bowring - A Tale of Cader Idris | Page 7

we sat on a
stone and smoked, "of the miserable littleness of men like you and me,
Bob!"
"Speak for yourself, sir," I said, laughing at his unaccustomed, but by
no means novel, reflection. "I am quite contented with my size,
although I am smaller than you, George. Dissatisfied mortal! Nature
wants no increase of us, or she would have had it."
"In another world we shall be much larger," he said, with his eyes on
the tops of the hills. "Last night I dreamed that my wife and children
were running to meet me in heaven, Bob."
"Tush! You go and catch fish," I replied; for tears were in his large, soft
eyes, and I hated the sentimental. "Would they ever let such a little
Turk as Bob Bistre into heaven, do you think? My godson would shout
all the angels deaf and outdrum all the cherubim."
"Poor little chap! He is very noisy; but he is not half a bad sort," said

George. "If he only comes like his godfather I shall wish no better luck
for him."
These were kind words, and I shook his hand to let him know that I felt
them; and then, as if he were ashamed of having talked rather weakly,
he took with his strong legs a dangerous leap of some ten or twelve feet
downward, and landed on a narrow ledge that overhung the river. Here
he put his rod together, and I heard the click of reel as he drew the loop
at the end of the line through the rings, and so on; and I heard him cry
"Chut!" as he took his flies from his Scotch cap and found a tangle; and
I saw the glistening of his rod, as the sunshine pierced the valley, and
then his tall, straight figure pass the corner of a crag that stood as
upright as a tombstone; and after that no more of any live and bright
George Bowring.
CHAPTER IV.
Swift is the flight of Time whenever a man would fain lay hold of him.
All created beings, from Behemoth to a butterfly, dread and fly (as best
they may) that universal butcher--man. And as nothing is more
carefully killed by the upper sort of mankind than Time, how can he
help making off for his life when anybody wants to catch him?
Of course, I am not of that upper sort, and make no pretence to be so;
but Time, perhaps, may be excused for thinking--having had such a
very short turn at my clothes--that I belonged to the aristocracy. At any
rate, while I drew, and rubbed, and dubbed, and made hieroglyphics,
Time was. uneasily shifting and shuffling the lines of the hills, as a
fever patient jerks and works the bed-clothes. And, worse than that, he
was scurrying westward (frightened, no doubt, by the equinox) at such
a pace that I was scared by the huddling together of shadows. Awaking
from a long, long dream--through which I had been working hard, and
laying the foundations of a thousand pounds hereafter--I felt the
invisible damp of evening settling in the valleys. The sun, from over
the sea, had still his hand on Cader Idris; but every inferior head and
height was gray in the sweep of his mantle.

I threw my hair back--for an artist really should be picturesque; and,
having no other beauty, must be firm to long hair, while it lasts--and
then I shouted, "George!" until the strata of the mountain (which dip
and jag, like veins of oak) began and sluggishly prolonged a slow
zig-zag of echoes. No counter-echo came to me; no ring of any
sonorous voice made crag, and precipice, and mountain vocal with the
sound of "Bob!"
"He must have gone back. What a fool I must be never to remember
seeing him! He saw that I was full of rubbish, and he would not disturb
me. He is gone back to the Cross-Pipes, no doubt And yet it does not
seem like him."
"To look for a pin in a bundle of hay" would be a job of sense and
wisdom rather than to seek a thing so very small as a very big man
among the depth, and height, and breadth of river, shingle, stone, and
rock, crag, precipice, and mountain. And so I doubled up my things,
while the very noise they made in doubling flurried and alarmed me;
and I thought it was not like George to leave me to find my way back
all alone, among the deep bogs, and the whirlpools, and the trackless
tracts of crag.
When I had got my fardel ready, and was about to shoulder it, the
sound of brisk, short steps, set sharply upon doubtful footing, struck my
ear, through the roar