"
"The moon of blossoms!" I said. "The moon of blossoms is a long
way off. I have panthers myself to tame before it comes. This wild
night gives one wild thoughts, Master Sparrow. The loud wind,
and the sound of the water, and the hurrying clouds - who knows if
we shall ever see the moon of blossoms?" I broke off with a laugh
for my own weakness. "It's not often that a soldier thinks of death,"
I said. "Come to bed, reverend sir. Nantauquas, again, good-night,
and may you tame your panther!"
In the great room of the minister's house I paced up and down;
now pausing at the window, to look out upon the fast darkening
houses of the town, the ever thickening clouds, and the bending
trees; now speaking to my wife, who sat in the chair I had drawn
for her before the fire, her hands idle in her lap, her head thrown
back against the wood, her face white and still, with wide dark
eyes. We waited for we knew not what, but the light still burned in
the Governor's house, and we could not sleep and leave it there.
It grew later and later. The wind howled down the chimney, and I
heaped more wood upon the fire. The town lay in darkness now ;
only in the distance burned like an angry star the light in the
Governor's house. In the lull between the blasts of wind it was so
very still that the sound of my footfalls upon the floor, the
dropping of the charred wood upon the hearth, the tapping of the
withered vines without the window, jarred like thunder.
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