The Way to Peace | Page 3

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The Way to Peace
by Margaret Deland

TO LORIN DELAND
KENNEBUNKPORT, MAINE AUGUST 12TH, 1910

I
ATHALIA HALL stopped to get her breath and look back over the
road climbing steeply up from the covered bridge. It was a little after
five, and the delicate air of dawn was full of wood and pasture scents--
the sweetness of bay and the freshness of dew-drenched leaves. In the
valley night still hung like gauze under the trees, but the top of the hill
was glittering with sunshine.
"Why, we've hardly come halfway!" she said.
Her husband, plodding along behind her, nodded ruefully. "Hardly," he
said.
In her slim prettiness Athalia Hall looked like a girl, but she was
thirty-four. Part of the girlishness lay in the smoothness of her white
forehead and in the sincere intensity of her gaze. She wore a blue linen
dress, and there was a little, soft, blue scarf under her chin; her white
hat, with pink roses and loops of gray-blue ribbon, shadowed eager,
unhumorous eyes, the color of forget-me-nots. Her husband was her
senior by several years-- a large, loose-limbed man, with a scholarly
face and mild, calm eyes--eyes that were full of a singular tenacity of
purpose. Just now his face showed the fatigue of the long climb up-hill;
and when his wife, stopping to look back over the glistening tops of the
birches, said, "I believe it's half a mile to the top yet!" he agreed,
breathlessly. "Hard work!" he said.
"It will be worth it when I get to the top and can see the view!" she
declared, and began to climb again.
"All the same, this road will be mighty hot when the sun gets full on it,"
her husband said; and added, anxiously, "I wish I had made you rest in

the station until train-time." She flung out her hands with an
exclamation: "Rest! I hate rest!"
"Hold on, and I'll give you a stick," he called to her; "it's a help when
you're climbing." He pulled down a slender birch, and, setting his foot
on it, broke it off at the root. She stopped, with an impatient gesture,
and waited while he tore off handfuls of leaves and whittled away the
side-shoots.
"Do hurry, Lewis!" she said.
They had left their train at five o'clock in the morning, and had been
sitting in the frowsy station, sleepily awaiting the express, when
Athalia had had this fancy for climbing the hill so that she might see
the view.
"It looks pretty steep," her husband warned her.
"It will be something to do, anyhow!" she said; and added, with a
restless sigh, "but