The Red Acorn [99]
Though fully as weary as they he could not sleep for hours. He was dominated by a feeling that a crisis in his fate was at hand, and as he lay and looked at the stars every possible shape that that fate could take drifted across his mind, even as the endlessly-varying cloud-shapes swept--now languidly, now hurriedly--across the domed sky above him. And as the moon and the stars shone through or around each of the clouds, making the lighter ones masses of translucent glory, and gilding the edges of even the blackest with silvery promise, so the thoughts of Rachel Bond suffused with some brightness every possible happening to him. If he achieved anything the achievement would have for its chief value that it won her commendation; if he fell, the blackness of death would be gilded by her knowledge that he died a brave man's death for her sweet sake.
He listened awhile to the mournful whinny of the mules; to the sound of artillery rolling up the resonant pike; to the crashing of newly-arrived regiments through the cedars as they made their camps in line-of-battle; to little spurts of firing between the nervous pickets, and at last fell asleep to dream that he was returning to Sardis, maimed but honor-crowned, to claim Rachel as his exultant bride.
---
The Christmas forenoon was quite well-advanced before the fatigue of Rachel Bond's long ride was sufficiently abated to allow her to awaken. Then a soft hum of voices impressed itself upon her drowsy senses, and she opened her eyes with the idea that there were several persons in the room engaged in conversation. But she saw that there was only Aunt Debby, seated in a low rocking-chair by the lazily burning fire, and reading aloud from a large Bible that lay open upon her knees. The reading was slow and difficult, as of one but little used to it, and many of the longer words were patiently spelled out. But this labored picking the way along the rugged path of knowledge, stumbling and halting at the nouns, and verbs, and surmounting the polysyllables a letter at a time, seemed to give the reader a deeper feeling of the value and meaning of each word, than is usually gained by the more facile scholar. As Rachel listened she became aware that Aunt Debby was reading that wonderful twelfth chapter of St. Luke, richest of all chapters in hopes and promises and loving counsel for the lowly and oppressed. She had reached the thirty-fifth verse, and read onward with a passionate earnestness and understanding that made every word have a new revelation to Rachel:
"Let your loins be girded up, and your lights burning;
"And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately.
"Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.
"And if ye shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and shall find them so, blessed are those servants.
"And this now that if the good man of the house had known what the hour the thief would come he would have watched, and not suffered his house to be broken through.
"Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not."
Rachel stirred a little, and Aunt Debby looked up and closed the book.
"I'm afeared I've roused ye up too soon," she said, coming toward the bed with a look of real concern upon her sad, sweet face. "I raylly didn't intend ter. I jest opened the book ter read teh promise 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot, an' read on; an' when I read, I must read out loud, ter git the good of hit. Some folks pretend they kin understand jest ez well when they read ter themselves. Mebbe they kin."
"O, no," replied Rachel cheerfully, "you didn't disturb me in the least. It was time that I got up, and I was glad to hear you read. I'm only
He listened awhile to the mournful whinny of the mules; to the sound of artillery rolling up the resonant pike; to the crashing of newly-arrived regiments through the cedars as they made their camps in line-of-battle; to little spurts of firing between the nervous pickets, and at last fell asleep to dream that he was returning to Sardis, maimed but honor-crowned, to claim Rachel as his exultant bride.
---
The Christmas forenoon was quite well-advanced before the fatigue of Rachel Bond's long ride was sufficiently abated to allow her to awaken. Then a soft hum of voices impressed itself upon her drowsy senses, and she opened her eyes with the idea that there were several persons in the room engaged in conversation. But she saw that there was only Aunt Debby, seated in a low rocking-chair by the lazily burning fire, and reading aloud from a large Bible that lay open upon her knees. The reading was slow and difficult, as of one but little used to it, and many of the longer words were patiently spelled out. But this labored picking the way along the rugged path of knowledge, stumbling and halting at the nouns, and verbs, and surmounting the polysyllables a letter at a time, seemed to give the reader a deeper feeling of the value and meaning of each word, than is usually gained by the more facile scholar. As Rachel listened she became aware that Aunt Debby was reading that wonderful twelfth chapter of St. Luke, richest of all chapters in hopes and promises and loving counsel for the lowly and oppressed. She had reached the thirty-fifth verse, and read onward with a passionate earnestness and understanding that made every word have a new revelation to Rachel:
"Let your loins be girded up, and your lights burning;
"And ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their Lord when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh they may open unto him immediately.
"Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching; verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.
"And if ye shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and shall find them so, blessed are those servants.
"And this now that if the good man of the house had known what the hour the thief would come he would have watched, and not suffered his house to be broken through.
"Be ye therefore ready also, for the Son of Man cometh at an hour when ye think not."
Rachel stirred a little, and Aunt Debby looked up and closed the book.
"I'm afeared I've roused ye up too soon," she said, coming toward the bed with a look of real concern upon her sad, sweet face. "I raylly didn't intend ter. I jest opened the book ter read teh promise 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot 'bout our Father heedin' even a sparrer's fall, an' forgot, an' read on; an' when I read, I must read out loud, ter git the good of hit. Some folks pretend they kin understand jest ez well when they read ter themselves. Mebbe they kin."
"O, no," replied Rachel cheerfully, "you didn't disturb me in the least. It was time that I got up, and I was glad to hear you read. I'm only