Round Anvil Rock | Page 2

dimmed only
by the breath of the approaching dusk. Out in the current beyond the
shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the
afterglow's pale gold. But the red glory of the west was dying behind
the whitening cottonwoods and beyond the dense dark forest--reaching
on and on to the seeming end of the earth--a billowing sea of ever
deepening green. The last bright gleam of golden light was passing
away on the white sail of a little ship which was just turning the distant
bend, where the darkening sky bent low to meet the darkened
wilderness.
The night was creeping from the woods to the waters as softly as the
wild creatures crept to the river's brim to drink before sleeping. The
still air was lightly stirred now and then by rushing wings, as the
myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches. The soft
murmuring of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the
waterfowl had already found resting-places. The swaying of the
cane-brakes--near and far--signalled the secret movements of the
wingless wild things which had only stealth to guard them against the
cruelty of nature and against one another. The heaviest waves of cane

near the great Shawnee Crossing might have followed a timid red deer.
For the Shawnees had vanished from their town on the other side of the
Ohio. Warriors and women and children--all were suddenly and
strangely gone; there was not even a canoe left to rock among the
rushes. The swifter, rougher waving of the cane farther off may have
been in the wake of a bold gray wolf. The howling of wolves came
from the distance with the occasional gusts of wind, and as often as the
wolves howled, a mysterious, melancholy booming sounded from the
deeper shadows along the shores. It was an uneasy response from the
trumpeter swans, resting like some wonderful silver-white lilies on the
quiet bosom of the dark river.
A great river has all the sea's charm and much of its mystery and
sadness. The boy standing on the Kentucky shore was under this spell
as he listened to these sounds of nature at nightfall on the Ohio, and
watched the majestic sweep of its waters--unfettered and
unsullied--through the boundless and unbroken forests. Yet he turned
eagerly to listen to another sound that came from human-kind. It was
the wild music of the boatman's horn winding its way back from the
little ship, now far away and rounding the dusky bend. Partly flying and
partly floating, it stole softly up the shadowed river. The melody
echoed from the misty Kentucky hills, lingered under the overhanging
trees, rambled through the sighing cane-brakes, loitered among the
murmuring rushes--thus growing ever fainter, sweeter, wilder, sadder,
as it came. He did not know why this sound of the boatman's horn
always touched him so keenly and moved him so deeply. He could not
have told why his eyes grew strangely dim as he heard it now, or why a
strange tightening came around his heart. He was but an ignorant lad of
the woods. It was not for him to know that these few notes--so few, so
simple, so artlessly blown by a rude boatman--touched the deep
fountain of the soul, loosing the mighty torrent pent up in every human
breast. Pity, tenderness, yearning, the struggle and the triumph of
life,--the boy felt everything and all unknowingly, but with quivering
sensibility. For he was not merely an ignorant lad; he was also one of
those who are set apart throughout their lives to feel many things which
they are never permitted to comprehend.

When the last echo of the boatman's horn had melted among the
darkling hills, he turned as instinctively as a sun-worshipper faces the
east and drank in another musical refrain. The Angelus was pealing
faintly from the bell of the little log chapel far up the river, hidden
among the trees. The faith which it betokened was not his own faith,
nor the faith of those with whom he lived, but the beauty and sweetness
of the token appealed to him none the less. How beautiful, how sweet it
was! As it thus came drifting down with the river's deepening shadows,
he thought of the little band of Sisters--angels of charity--kneeling
under that rough roof; those brave gentlewomen of high birth and
delicate breeding who were come with the very first to take an heroic
part in the making of Kentucky and, so doing, in the winning of the
whole West. As the boy thought of them with a swelling heart,--for
they had been kind to him,--it seemed that they were braver than the
hunters, more courageous than the soldiers. Listening to the appeal of
the Angelus stealing so tenderly through the twilight, with the strain