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That garden was kept in marvelous order by a single man; the paths, covered with river-sand, continually turned over with the rake, meandered among the borders full of the rarest flowers.
It was lonely there, and she wandered on and on, through sun and shadow, under low-hanging branches, by tiny beaches of clean river-sand, and all the way she went the river ran beside her singing a low, cheery song as it rippled over its uneven bed. It could not be long before such loveliness must have a soothing effect on any troubled spirit.
When properly hardened he scoured them carefully with river-sand and filled them one at a time, struggling up the hard ascent with a stout heart for all this toil meant safety for the girl; it was all another step on the hard pathway toward the goal. In her sleep that night he bent above her, kissed her tenderly, and realized how inexpressibly dear she was to him.
"It must come," she said, in the hushed voice of a child who dreams, wide-eyed awake, murmuring of wonders. I slept on the river-sand, not soundly, for all night long men and horses splashed in the water all around me, and I was conscious of many people stirring, of voices, the dip of paddles, and of the slow batteaux passing with the wavelets slapping on their bows. Then, the next I knew bang!
I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking everywhere for traces of the household that had come down from Bethlehem, and finding them under the spreading sycamore-trees of Heliopolis, and beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of New Babylon beside the Nile traces so faint and dim that they vanished before him continually, as footprints on the hard river-sand glisten for a moment with moisture and then disappear.
He sat on a thyme-covered hummock by the valley stream, with knees drawn up and palms pressed against his aching head: sat as he had been sitting for half an hour past, a shovel beside him and an empty sack, which he had brought down to fill with clean river-sand.
I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking everywhere for traces of the household that had come down from Bethlehem, and finding them under the spreading sycamore-trees of Heliopolis, and beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of New Babylon beside the Nile traces so faint and dim that they vanished before him continually, as footprints on the hard river-sand glisten for a moment with moisture and then disappear.
The old lady from Chicago would have none of him; so we loafed alone together, now across half-rotten pine logs sunk in swampy ground, anon over the ringing geyser formation, then pounding through river-sand or brushing knee-deep through long grass. "And why did you enlist?" said I. The moon-faced one's face began to work.
The postman's horn in the village street above him shook the Parson out of his idleness, if not out of his dark thoughts. He sprang up, gripped his shovel, and began spading the white river-sand into his sack. "It is useless, after all," said he to himself. "The crack on the south of the tower stands still, but the smaller and more dangerous one the one on the weather side is widening fast.
I saw him moving among the throngs of men in populous Egypt, seeking everywhere for traces of the household that had come down from Bethlehem, and finding them under the spreading sycamore-trees of Heliopolis, and beneath the walls of the Roman fortress of New Babylon beside the Nile traces so faint and dim that they vanished before him continually, as footprints on the wet river-sand glisten for a moment with moisture and then disappear.
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