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Dead cedars right at hand assured him a comfortable night with steady fire; and when he had satisfied his hunger he arranged an easy seat before the blazing logs, and gave his mind over to thought of his weird, lonely environment. The murmur of running water mingled in harmonious accompaniment with the moan of the wind in the cedars wild, sweet sounds that were balm to his wounded spirit!
The falls were in plain view about a mile off, but very distinct, and no roar hardly a murmur. The river tumbling green and white, far below me; the dark high banks, the plentiful umbrage, many bronze cedars, in shadow; and tempering and arching all the immense materiality, a clear sky overhead, with a few white clouds, limpid, spiritual, silent.
In his scenes we have the infinitude of soft silver beach, the rolling tumultuousness of a boundless sea, and twisted cedars mounted like toiling ships on the crests of undulating sand-hills. It is the charm, the dream, the power and the peace of the Desert.
How lovely to see him rioting in the luxuriance of those dear old gardens, rolling on that velvet sward, racing his favourite dogs round and round the grand old cedars! What a pony he should ride! His daily raiment should be Genoa velvet and old point lace. He should be the admiration and delight of half the county.
"A woman at such a time? Why, sergeant, it's impossible!" "No, sir, it isn't. See here!" He opened his left hand. Within the palm lay a tiny bit of thin gray cloth. "There may not be more than a dozen threads here," he said, "but I found 'em sticking to a thorn bush not twenty yards away. A half hour ago they were a part of a woman's dress. A thorn bush grows among the cedars above.
The green and frosted foliage of the pines and cedars; the flowery tracery of frost hanging like cobwebs everywhere; the poudre sparkle in the air; the hills of silver and emerald sloping down to the valley miles away, where the village clustered about the great old parish church; the smoke from a hundred chimneys, in purple spirals, rising straight up in the windless air; over all peace and a perfect silence.
I went early to bed and slept like a log. The following morning some of our horses were lost. The men hunted from daylight till ten o'clock. Then it was that I learned more about Lee's dog Pups. At ten-thirty Lee came in with the lost horses. They had hidden in a clump of cedars and remained perfectly quiet, as cute as deer. Lee put Pups on their trail.
A house of native stone built into and among weather-scarred rocks, one massive wing butting seaward, others nosing north and south among cedars and outcropping ledges the whole silver-grey mass of masonry reddening under a westering sun, every dormer, every leaded diamond pane aflame; this was Shotover as Siward first beheld it.
The sun had slipped behind the cedars of the Long Hill and the valley was clothed in a wonderful combination of all shades of blue the cloak Mother Nature so often throws round her shoulders after a shower. The towering elms, the glossy beeches, and the spreading maples, that grew on either side of the highway, were all bathed in the blue radiance.
I rose early this morning, and would have made my sketches and got away without seeing you if it were not for a delightful pair of wrought iron gates passed en route. They detained me three quarters of an hour. Instead of reaching the clump of cedars at a quarter to seven or thereabouts, I arrived at half past seven. "I sketched the house and lawns and then turned to the lake.
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