The Queen of Sheba / My Cousin the Colonel | Page 9

taking abrupt
flight from a blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin
skin glimmered spectrally among the sombre foliage.
The inarticulate sadness of the place brought a momentary feeling of
depression to Lynde, who was not usually given to moods except of the
lighter sort. He touched Mary sharply with the spurs and cantered up
the steep.
He had nearly gained the summit of the hill when he felt the saddle
slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken. As he dismounted, the
saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup. The mare shied,

and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but Mary gave a
vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, and began trotting down the
declivity. Her trot at once broke into a gallop, and the gallop into a full
run--a full run for Mary. At the foot of the hill she stumbled, fell, rolled
over, gathered herself up, and started off again at increased speed. The
road was perfectly straight for a mile or two. The horse was already a
small yellow patch in the distance. She was evidently on her way back
to Rivermouth! Lynde watched her until she was nothing but a speck
against the gray road, then he turned and cast a rueful glance on the
saddle, which suddenly took to itself a satirical aspect, as it lay
sprawling on the ground at his feet.
He had been wanting something to happen, and something had
happened. He was unhorsed and alone in the heart of the hill
country--alone in a strange and, it seemed to Lynde as he looked about
him, uninhabited region.

IV
THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL YOUNG LYNDE IN
THE HILL COUNTRY
It had all happened so suddenly that one or two minutes passed before
Edward Lynde took in the full enormity of Mary's desertion. A dim
smile was still hovering about his lips when the yellow speck that was
Mary faded into the gray distance; then his countenance fell. There was
no sign of mortal habitation visible from the hillside where he stood;
the farm at which he had spent the night was five miles away; his stiff
riding-boots were ill-adapted to pedestrianism. The idea of lugging that
heavy saddle five miles over a mountain road caused him to knit his
brows and look very serious indeed. As he gave the saddle an impatient
kick, his eyes rested on the Bologna sausage, one end of which
protruded from the holster; then there came over him a poignant
recollection of his Lenten supper of the night before and his no
breakfast at all of that morning. He seated himself on the saddle,
unwrapped the sausage, and proceeded to cut from it two or three thin

slices.
"It might have been much worse," he reflected, as he picked off with
his penknife the bits of silver foil which adhered to the skin of the
sausage; "if Mary had decamped with the commissary stores, that
would have been awkward." Lynde devoured the small pieces of
pressed meat with an appetite born of his long fast and the bracing
upland air.
"Talk about pate de foie gras!" he exclaimed, with a sweep of his arm,
as if he were disdainfully waving back a menial bearing a tray of
Strasbourg pates; "if I live to return to Rivermouth I will have Bologna
sausage three times a day for the rest of my life."
A cup of the ice-cold water which bubbled up from a boss of cresses by
the roadside completed his Spartan breakfast. His next step was to
examine his surroundings. "From the top of this hill," said Lynde, "I
shall probably be able to see where I am, if that will be any comfort to
me."
It was only fifty or sixty rods to the crown of the hill, where the road,
viewed from below, seemed abruptly to come to an end against the sky.
On gaining the summit, Lynde gave an involuntary exclamation of
surprise and delight. At his feet in the valley below, in a fertile plain
walled in on all sides by the emerald slopes, lay the loveliest village
that ever was seen. Though the road by which he had approached the
eminence had been narrow and steep, here it widened and descended by
gentle gradations into the valley, where it became the main street of the
village--a congregation of two or possibly three hundred houses, mostly
cottages with gambrel and lean-to roofs. At the left of the village, and
about an eighth of a mile distant, was an imposing red brick building
with wings and a pair of octagon towers. It stood in a forest of pines
and maples, and appeared to be enclosed by a high wall of masonry.