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Up to this time the air had been still, and very hot; but suddenly a fierce wind came upon us with a hoarse roar almost like the waves of the sea up the valley and over the hill-top it came, right down upon us, tearing at the forest-trees.
She had carried away an image from her visit to his hill-top which her subsequent knowledge of him did nothing to efface and which put on for her a particular harmony with other supposed and divined things, histories within histories: the image of a quiet, clever, sensitive, distinguished man, strolling on a moss-grown terrace above the sweet Val d'Arno and holding by the hand a little girl whose bell-like clearness gave a new grace to childhood.
The movement caused him to ease his hand upon the reins. Instantly the horses sprang into a gallop. So intent was he that for the moment the change passed unnoticed. He seemed only to have eyes and thought for that distant hill-top. Then of a sudden he realized the dangerous breakneck speed, and turned his attention upon his team.
Somewhere on that hazy hill-top a new flag was flying; soldiers of a new nation were guarding it, unseen by her. It was the first outpost of her own people that she had ever seen; and she looked at it wistfully, proudly, her soul in her eyes.
But many alterations and enlargements of the palaces were made after the date of Nero, and we cannot now be sure of the precise aspect of the hill-top in his day.
When the lovers reached the hill-top and paused beside the ancient and decaying poplar, the sun had just gone down behind North Mountain, and a sombre splendor flooded the giant brow of Blomidon. The girl pointed toward the mouth of the creek. Desbra could not restrain a cry of astonishment.
As she stood gazing on the hill-top, high landmark of her history, she felt as if the earth were holding her up toward heaven, an offering to the higher life. The hill grew an altar of prayer on which her soul was lying, dead until taken up into life by the arms of the Father. A deep content pervaded her heart.
On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow; now aloft on the bare ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes; and anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars. Now she followed wandering wood-paths, in the maze of valleys; and again, from a hill-top, beheld the distant mountains and the great birds circling under the sky.
The hill-top was covered with the trippers who seem perpetually holidaying on their island, and who were always kind to their children when they had them, and to each other when they had not. They were commonly in couples, very affectionate and inoffensively young. They wandered about, and from time to time went and had tea at one of the tea-houses which are always at hand over there.
"For you priests and priestesses of El and Baaltis, think of my words, and raise the loud song of triumph to your gods when you yourselves are their offering, and the red flame of the fire burns you up, all of you save your sins, which are immortal. O citizens of an accursed city, look on the hill-top yonder and tell me, what do you see in the light of the dying day? A sheen of spears, is it not?
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