The Friendly Road [43]
I wish I could convey the mystery and the beauty of that night. Did you ever sit by a campfire and watch the flames dance, and the sparks fly upward into the cool dark air? Did you ever see the fitful light among the tree-depths, at one moment opening vast shadowy vistas into the forest, at the next dying downward and leaving it all in sombre mystery? It came to me that night with the wonderful vividness of a fresh experience.
And what a friendly and companionable thing a campfire is! How generous and outright it is! It plays for you when you wish so be lively, and it glows for you when you wish to be reflective.
After a while, for I did not feel in the least sleepy, I stepped out of the woods to the edge of the pasture. All around me lay the dark and silent earth, and above the blue bowl of the sky, all glorious with the blaze of a million worlds. Sometimes I have been oppressed by this spectacle of utter space, of infinite distance, of forces too great for me to grasp or understand, but that night it came upon me with fresh wonder and power, and with a sense of great humility that I belonged here too, that I was a part of it all--and would not be neglected or forgotten. It seemed to me I never had a moment of greater faith than that.
And so, with a sense of satisfaction and peace, I returned to my fire. As I sat there I could hear the curious noises of the woods, the little droppings, cracklings, rustlings which seemed to make all the world alive. I even fancied I could see small bright eyes looking out at my fire, and once or twice I was almost sure I heard voices--whispering--perhaps the voices of the woods.
Occasionally I added, with some amusement, a few dry pages of Montaigne to the fire, and watched the cheerful blaze that followed.
"No," said I, "Montaigne is not for the open spaces and the stars. Without a roof over his head Montaigne would--well, die of sneezing."
So I sat all night long there by the tree. Occasionally I dropped into a light sleep, and then, as my fire died down, I grew chilly and awakened, to build up the fire and doze again. I saw the first faint gray streaks of dawn above the trees, I saw the pink glow in the east before the sunrise, and I watched the sun himself rise upon a new day--
When I walked out into the meadow by daylight and looked about me curiously, I saw, not forty rods away, the back of a barn.
"Be you the fellow that was daown in my cowpasture all night?" asked the sturdy farmer.
"I'm that fellow," I said.
"Why didn't you come right up to the house?"
"Well--" I said, and then paused.
"Well . . ." said I.
CHAPTER VIII. THE HEDGE
Strange, strange, how small the big world is!
"Why didn't you come right into the house?" the sturdy farmer had asked me when I came out of the meadow where I had spent the night under the stars.
"Well," I said, turning the question as adroitly as I could, "I'll make it up by going into the house now."
So I went with him into his fine, comfortable house.
"This is my wife," said he.
A woman stood there facing me. "Oh!" she exclaimed, "Mr. Grayson!"
I recalled swiftly a child--a child she seemed then--with braids down her back, whom I had known when I first came to my farm. She had grown up, married, and had borne three children, while I had been looking the other way for a minute or two. She had not been in our neighborhood for several years.
"And how is your sister and Doctor McAlway?"
Well, we had quite a wonderful visit, she made breakfast for me, asking and talking eagerly as I ate.
"We've just had news that old Mr. Toombs is dead."
"Dead!" I exclaimed, dropping my fork; "old Nathan Toombs!"
"Yes, he was my uncle. Did you know him?"
"I knew Nathan Toombs," I said.
I spent two days there with the Ransomes, for they would not hear of my leaving, and half of our spare time, I think, was spent in discussing Nathan Toombs. I was not able to get him out of my mind for days, for his death was one of those events which prove so much and leave so much unproven.
I can