United States or Antigua and Barbuda ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Later, there'd be a run on the beach, and a ride on a donkey, and a dance, with delirious music and frolic. And then the moon and quiet, and I would steal away from the crowd, and take a little boat, and float and drift " "Alone?" asked Bero, softly. "Surely, you wouldn't condemn a mountaineer's yellow moustache, or a soldier's spurs and sword, if at heart he was really a child of the sun also?
Then for a moment he took a swift glance into the future, wondering how long it might be before he could come abreast of this mountaineer's supposed dependability and, perhaps, pass on ahead of it! But Brent was not in the habit of gazing future-ward, and he could not hold the focus for long at a time.
She had scarcely heard what was said after the mountaineer's first accusation, so completely had that enthralled her mind; now fragments came back to her. There was something about a picture-ah! she remembered that picture. Passing through the camp one afternoon, she had glanced in at a window and had seen a rifle once her own.
"I've been hunting for that mount'in for forty years, Johnny!" "Mac!" Aldous leaned over and laid a hand on the old mountaineer's shoulder. Still MacDonald did not look at him. "Forty years," he repeated, as if speaking to himself. "I see how I missed it now, just as DeBar said. I hunted from the west, an' on that side the mount'in ain't black.
The transition from the careless life of a student was swift and bitter; it was like beginning a new life with a new identity, though Clayton suffered less than he anticipated. He had become interested from the first. There was nothing in the pretty glen, when he came, but a mountaineer's cabin and a few gnarled old apple-trees, the roots of which checked the musical flow of a little stream.
And as tradition, the handing down of legends from father to son, forms such a part of the mountaineer's education, I was not surprised to hear a party of Tyrolese giggle at moments when the deeper meaning of the play was holding the rest of us in a spell so tense that it hurt.
Old Donald had come close to his side, and at the look in the gray old mountaineer's face John Aldous paused. Slowly Donald laid his hands on his shoulders. "Johnny," he said gently, "Johnny, be you sure of yourself? Be you a man, Johnny?" "Good heaven, Donald. You mean " Their eyes met steadily. "If you are, Johnny," went on MacDonald in a low voice, "I'd take her with me.
With this she sprang about, her back to the wall and at bay, to receive the infuriated mountaineer's charge. But he had not moved. He stood just where she had left him; looking at her, now again swaying his body in that tense, sullen motion. And suddenly she began to laugh, leaning forward in a crouching attitude, her hands clenched close to her knees.
"I'm glad you've come, Aldous," he said. "I've been waiting ever since the train come in. I was afraid you'd go to the cabin!" Aldous stepped forth and gripped the old mountaineer's outstretched hand. There was intense relief in Donald's eyes. "I got a little camp back here in the bush," he went on, nodding riverward. "It's safer 'n the shack these days. Yo're sure there ain't no one following?"
Just then his quick ear caught the sound of stumbling, hurried footsteps, plainly not a mountaineer's, down in the rough woodland, below. Instantly his muscles tautened, instantly he brought his rifle to position; but he soon let it fall again and smiled, perhaps, for the first time that day. "Lawsy! Lawsy!" he could hear a scared voice muttering. "Lawsy, I is los', fo' suah!"
Word Of The Day