When he was
leaving the plateau, that day, he looked back at it, as if to say
good-bye,--not to the dingy fields and river, but to the
Something he had nursed so long in his rugged heart, and given up
now forever. As he looked, the warm, red sun came out, lighting
up with a heartsome warmth the whole gray day. Some blessing
power seemed to look at him from this grave yard of his hopes,
from the gloomy hills, the prairie, and the river, which he never
was to see again. His hope accomplished could not have looked at
him with surer content and fulfilment. He turned away,
ungrateful and moody. Long afterwards he remembered the calm and
brightness which his hand had not been raised to make, and
understood the meaning of its promise.
He went to work now in earnest: he had to work for his
bread-and-butter, you understand? Restless, impatient at first;
but we will forgive him that: you yourself were not altogether
submissive, perhaps, when the slow-built expectation of life was
destroyed by some chance, as you called it, no more controllable
than this paltry burning of a mill. Yet, now that the great hope
was gone on which his brain had worked with rigid, fierce
intentness, now that his hands were powerless to redeem a
perishing class, he had time to fall into careless, kindly habit:
he thought it wasted time, remorsefully, of course. He was
seized with a curiosity to know what plan in living these people
had who crossed his way on the streets; if they were
disappointed, like him.
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