The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 8

morning face, on the way to school, the woodland solitudes, the
farmers at work in the fields, the blue jays and the robins in the
orchards, the blonde and brown girls at the cottage doors, his own
buoyant, unreproachful thoughts--what need had he of company? If
anything could have added to his enjoyment it would have been the
possibility of being waylaid by bandits, or set upon in some desolate
pass by wild animals. But, alas, the nearest approximation to a bandit
that fell in his way was some shabby, spiritless tramp who passed by on
the further side without lifting an eyelid; and as for savage animals, he
saw nothing more savage than a monkish chipmunk here and there,
who disappeared into his stonewall convent the instant he laid eyes on
Lynde.
Riding along those lonely New England roads, he was more secure than
if he had been lounging in the thronged avenues of a great city.

Certainly he had dropped on an age and into a region sterile of
adventure. He felt this, but not so sensitively as to let it detract from the
serene pleasure he found in it all. From the happy glow of his mind
every outward object took a rosy light; even a rustic funeral, which he
came upon at a cross-road that fore-noon, softened itself into something
not unpicturesque.
For three days after quitting K---Lynde pushed steadily forward. The
first two nights he secured lodgings at a farm-house; on the third night
he was regarded as a suspicious character, and obtained reluctant
permission to stow himself in a hay-loft, where he was so happy at
roughing it and being uncomfortable that he could scarcely close an eye.
The amateur outcast lay dreamily watching the silver spears of
moonlight thrust through the roof of the barn, and extracting such
satisfaction from his cheerless surroundings as would have astonished a
professional tramp. "Poverty and hardship are merely ideas after all,"
said Lynde to himself softly, as he drifted off in a doze. Ah, Master
Lynde, playing at poverty and hardship is one thing; but if the reality is
merely an idea, it is one of the very worst ideas in the world.
The young man awoke before sunrise the next morning, and started
onward without attempting to negotiate for breakfast with his surly host.
He had faith that some sunburnt young woman, with bowl of
brown-bread and milk, would turn up farther on; if she did not, and no
tavern presented itself, there were the sausage and the flask of
eau-de-vie still untouched in the holsters.
The mountain air had not wholly agreed with Mary, who at this stage of
the journey inaugurated a series of abnormal coughs, each one of which
went near to flinging Lynde out of the saddle.
"Mary," he said, after a particularly narrow escape, "there are few fine
accomplishments you haven't got except a spavin. Perhaps you've got
that, concealed somewhere about your person."
He said this in a tone of airy badinage which Mary seemed to
appreciate; but he gravely wondered what he could do with her, and
how he should replace her, if she fell seriously ill.

For the last two days farm-houses and cultivated fields had been
growing rarer and rarer, and the road rougher and wilder. At times it
made a sudden detour, to avoid the outcropping of a monster stratum of
granite, and in places became so narrow that the rank
huckleberry-bushes swept the mare's flanks. Lynde found it advisable
on the morning in question to pick his way carefully. A range of arid
hills rose darkly before him, stretching east and west further than his
eye could follow--rugged, forlorn hills covered with a thick prickly
undergrowth, and sentinelled by phantom-like pines. There were
gloomy, rocky gorges on each hand, and high-hanging crags, and where
the vapor was drawn aside like a veil, in one place, he saw two or three
peaks with what appeared to be patches of snow on them. Perhaps they
were merely patches of bleached rock.
Long afterwards, when Edward Lynde was passing through the valley
of the Arve, on the way from Geneva to Chamouni, he recollected this
bit of Switzerland in America, and it brought an odd, perplexed smile
to his lips.
The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which had thronged the heights,
shutting in the prospect on every side, had now vanished, discovering
as wild and melancholy a spot as a romantic heart could desire. There
was something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that lighted up
these bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring--whose source was
hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders--dripping
silently from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly
stillness was broken only by the dismal caw of a crow