OLD FRIENDS. 363 



wondering what his boy was doing there on that rock, his 

 eyes flashing back the light out of his own. And while I 

 sat there, he vanished and another stood in his place. 

 Old Simon Gray, who taught me how to catch trout forty 

 years ago, the good old friend of my childhood, looked 

 around the column, and I caught the old smile on his face. 

 How my heart leaped to see the good old man. How I 

 longed to ask him if the chestnut locks of his beloved 

 wife lay clustering on his breast in the land of his present 

 abiding ! And though he spoke not a word, the old man 

 knew my thoughts and answered me : " She is here, the 

 beloved of olden times," and as he spoke she looked over 

 his shoulder. It was strange, the contrast. I had never 

 known her, for she died long before I was born, but I had 

 often heard him speak of her young beauty, and now they 

 stood before me. He was old, very old, and his white 

 locks lay thin on his head, and the smiles of heaven rested 

 among the deep harsh lines of sad age. But she was in 

 her young, pure, matronly beauty; and her eye, blue as the 

 skies of summer nights, and flashing as the stars, gleamed 

 with a joy that can not be described. Her long curls of 

 chestnut flowed over her neck and down her shoulders, 

 like a river of rich, deep, magnificent beauty, through which 

 glimpses of her temples seemed like diamonds. And she 

 looked at the old man, and did not seem to think him old, 

 but lovingly (how lovingly !) she laid her head on his 

 shoulder, and wound her arms around his neck, and led 

 him away out of sight. And when they were gone, for a 

 little while there were only bushes swinging in the wind, 

 and now and then the moan of a tree that had fallen 

 against another, and complained as the rising wind moved 

 it. And then, down the slope, among the trees, where a 

 silver stream of water ran over rocks hastening toward 



