I ran to one on the stair that looked at right
angles to mine: he had not yet come within its field. I stood and waited.
Presently he appeared, crawling along, a gray mounted ghost, in the light
that so strangely befits lovers wandering in the May of hope, and the
wasted spectre no less, whose imagination of the past reveals him to the
eyes of men. For an instant I almost wished him dead and at rest; the
next I was out of the house--then up on the moor, looking eagerly this
way and that, poised on the swift feet of love, ready to spring to his
bosom. How I longed to lead him to his own warm bed, and watch by him as
he slept, while the great father kept watch over every heart in his
universe. I gazed and gazed, but nowhere could I see the death-jaded
horseman.
I bounded down the hill, through the wilderness and the dark alleys, and
hurried to the stable. Trembling with haste I led Zoe out, sprang on her
bare back, and darted off to scout the moor. Not a man or a horse or a
live thing was to be seen in any direction! Once more I all but concluded
I had looked on an apparition. Was my uncle dead? Had he come back thus
to let me know? And was he now gone home indeed? Cold and disappointed, I
returned to bed, full of the conviction that I had seen my uncle, but
whether in the body or out of the body, I could not tell.
When John came, the notion of my having been out alone on the moor in the
middle of the night, did not please him.
Pages:
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195