The voices of the women were musical, tender, and
plaintive, and yet they waited for the morrow as for a gala day. I
thought of a woman who used to sing, softly and sweetly, in the
twilight at Weyanoke, in the firelight at the minister's house. At
last the noises ceased, the light died away, and the village slept
beneath a heaven that seemed somewhat deaf and blind.
CHAPTER XXXI IN WHICH NANTAUQUAS COMES TO OUR RESCUE
A MAN who hath been a soldier and an adventurer into far and
strange countries must needs have faced Death many times and in
many guises. I had learned to know that grim countenance, and to
have no great fear of it. And beneath the ugliness of the mask that
now presented itself there was only Death at last. I was no babe to
whimper at a sudden darkness, to cry out against a curtain that a
Hand chose to drop between me and the life I had lived. Death
frighted me not, but when I thought of one whom I should leave
behind me I feared lest I should go mad. Had this thing come to
me a year before, I could have slept the night through; now- now-
I lay, bound to the log, before the open door of the lodge, and,
looking through it, saw the pines waving in the night wind and the
gleam of the river beneath the stars, and saw her as plainly as
though she had stood there under the trees, in a flood of noon
sunshine.
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