white house where Dr. William Cheyney lived, but that was where Eshcol lapped over on to Little Paradise, for they had bridged the creek ten years before. Across the river lay the city, big and smoky and busy, its spires rising above its shining roofs.

[24]

A light mist, diaphanous and shimmering, floated over the lowlands by the water, and above it the dark green of the young foliage and the lovely slope of clovered fields seemed to assume a new and beautiful significance, to suggest mysterious unfoldings, buds and blossoming time, the gathered promise of a hundred springs, that mysterious awakening of life which stirred the lonely man’s imagination with a thrill of pleasure as poignant as it was unusual. To him these lonely walks at sunrise and moonrise had been his greatest solace, and there was a companionship in the slight hushed sounds of woodland life which approached his inner consciousness more nearly than the alien existence that circumstances had forced upon him. He was a stranger in almost a strange land. He had been born and brought up in Philadelphia, and his family belonged to the Society of Friends. Personally, Caleb Trench was not orthodox, but the bias of his early training held, and the poverty that had followed his father’s business failure had tended to increase the simplicity of the boy’s narrowed life.[25] When death had intervened and taken first his father, whom business ruin had broken, and then his mother and sister, Caleb had severed the last tie that bound him to the East and started West to make his fortune, with the boundless confidence of youth that he would succeed. The lodestar that has drawn so many on that fantastic quest had drawn him, and failing in first one venture and then another, because it is easier to buy experience than to accumulate wealth, he had come at last to the little shop at Eshcol and the study of law. Wherein lay the touchstone of his life, though he knew it not.

[25]

Pausing now, a moment, to view his favorite scene, the lowlands by the river under their silvery mantle of vapor, he turned and took the sharp descent from the bluff to the old turnpike. A cherry tree in full bloom stood like a ghost at the corner of Judge Hollis’ orchard, and the long lane was white with the falling petals. A light shone warmly through the crimson curtains of Judge Hollis’ library window, and Caleb took the familiar path to the side door. The latch was usually down, but to-night he had to knock, and the judge’s sister, Miss Sarah, opened the door.

“Is that you, Caleb?” she 

 Prev. P 15/183 next