against the loop of a root, was thrown violently forward, and the bundle
slipped noiselessly from the saddle to the earth.
She did not see it. She indignantly gathered the reins more tightly in her
hand, pushed back her bonnet, which now hung down over her eyes like the
bill of a pelican, and applied her little switch of wild cherry to the
horse's flank with such vehemence that a fly which was about to alight on
that spot went to the other side. The old horse himself--he bore the
peaceable name of William Penn--merely gave one of the comforting switches
of his bob-tail with which he brushed away the thought of any small
annoyance, and stopped a moment to nibble at the wayside cane mixed with
purple blossoming peavine.
Out of the lengthening shadows of the woods the girl and the horse passed on
toward the little town; and far behind them in the public road lay the lost
bundle.
II
IN the open square on Cheapside in Lexington there is now a bronze statue of
John Breckinridge. Not far from where it stands the pioneers a hundred years
ago had built the first log school-house of the town.
Poor old school-house, long since become scattered ashes! Poor little
backwoods academicians, driven in about sunrise, driven out toward dusk!
Poor little tired backs with nothing to lean against! Poor little bare feet
that could never reach the floor! Poor little droop-headed figures, so
sleepy in the long summer days, so afraid to fall asleep! Long, long since,
little children of the past, your backs have become straight enough,
measured on the same cool bed; sooner or later your feet, wherever
wandering, have found their resting-places in the soft earth; and all your
drooping heads have gone to sleep on the same dreamless pillow and there are
sleeping. And the young schoolmaster, who seemed exempt from frailty while
he guarded like a sentinel that lone outpost of the alphabet--he too has
long since joined the choir invisible of the immortal dead. But there is
something left of him though more than a century has passed away: something
that has wandered far down the course of time to us like the faint summer
fragrance of a young tree long since fallen dead in its wintered
forest--like a dim radiance yet travelling onward into space from an orb
turned black and cold--like an old melody, surviving on and on in the air
without any instrument, without any strings.
John Gray, the school-master. At four o'clock that afternoon and therefore
earlier than usual, he was standing on the hickory block which formed the
doorstep of the school-house, having just closed the door behind him for the
day. Down at his side, between the thumb and forefinger of one hand, hung
his big black hat, which was decorated with a tricoloured cockade, to show
that he was a member of the Democratic Society of Lexington, modelled after
the Democratic Society of Philadelphia and the Jacobin clubs of France. In
the open palm of the other lay his big silver English lever watch with a
glass case and broad black silk fob.
A young fellow of powerful build, lean, muscular; wearing simply but with
gentlemanly care a suit of black, which was relieved around his wrists and
neck by linen, snow-white and of the finest quality. In contrast with his
dress, a complexion fresh, pure, brilliant--the complexion of health and
innocence; in contrast with this complexion from above a mass of coarse
dark-red hair, cut short and loosely curling. Much physical beauty in the
head, the shape being noble, the pose full of dignity and of strength;
almost no beauty in the face itself except in the gray eyes which were
sincere, modest, grave. Yet a face not without moral loftiness and
intellectual power; rugged as a rock, but as a rock is made less rugged by a
little vine creeping over it, so his was softened by a fine network of
nerves that wrought out upon it a look of kindness; betraying the first
nature of passion, but disciplined to the higher nature of control;
youthful, but wearing those unmistakable marks of maturity which mean a
fierce early struggle against the rougher forces of the world. On the whole,
with the calm, self respecting air of one who, having thus far won in the
battle of life, has a fiercer longing for larger conflict, and whose entire
character rests on the noiseless conviction that he is a man and a
gentleman.
Deeper insight would have been needed to discover how true and earnest a
soul he was; how high a value he set on what the future had in store for him
and on what his life would be worth to himself and to others; and how,
liking rather to help himself than to be helped, he liked less to be trifled
with and least of all to be seriously thwarted.
He was thinking, as his eyes rested on the watch, that if this were one of
his ordinary days he would pursue his ordinary duties; he would go up street
to the office of Marshall and for the next hour read as many pages of law as
possible; then get his supper at his favourite tavern--the Sign of the
Spinning, Wheel--near the two&
