I swept down the
staircase. I banged the front-door. I locked it with an accent, and
marched up the hill. A soft sighing breathed past me. I knew it was the
old house mourning for her departing child. The sun had disappeared,
but the western sky was jubilant in purple and gold. The cool evening
calmed me. The echoes of the war-whoop vibrated almost tenderly along
the hushed hillside. I paused on the summit of the hill and looked
back. Down in the valley stood the sorrowful house, tasting the first
bitterness of perpetual desolation. The maples and the oaks and the
beech-trees hung out their flaming banners. The pond lay dark in the
shadow of the circling hills. The years called to me,--the happy,
sun-ripe years that I had left tangled in the apple-blossoms, and
moaning among the pines, and tinkling in the brook, and floating in the
cups of the water-lilies. They looked up at me from the orchard, dark
and cool. They thrilled across from the hill-tops, glowing still with
the glowing sky. I heard their voice by the lilac-bush. They smiled at
me under the peach-trees, and where the blackberries had ripened
against the southern wall. I felt them once more in the clover-smells
and the new-mown hay.
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