The Redemption of David Corson

is a senseless

ic

e and the interview with him by the roadside had op

rstitions of the gypsies by whom she had been reared were confusedly blended wi

istence. The quack cared little what she thought, and had neither t

vid had awakened her soul, and now that she really began to grapple with t

re the God of whom David had spoken and the Quaker himself. Both of them

her booth, and far into the night, she had revolved in her mind the words she had heard,

itter. She did not comprehend the nature of her feeling for him; but his presence gave her

ust look into to-morrow and see if the Quaker was ever to cross her path again. For so important, so delicate and so difficult a discovery it seemed to her that the ordinary instruments of her art were pitifully inadequate. The playing card

rly and hurried breakfast Sunday morning, told her husband that she was going to

e her way swiftly towards the great forest which lay

well have been the first woman who had ever done so, for she knew nothing of the experiences of others who had encountered them, and she had scarcely heard an echo of the great life-truths which seers have been ages in dis

ht! Perhaps the act which Pepeeta was about to perform had more ethical and spiritual value than the casual observer would suppose, because of the perfect sincerity with which she undertook

e of hills between them. Each was following the brightest light that had shone upon the pathway of life. Both were absorbed with the highest thoughts of which they were capable. As invisible pla

mysterious influences of the forest. At the edge of the primeval wilderness a solemn hush stole over her. She entered its precincts as if it were a temple and she a worshiper with a votive offering. Threading her way through the winding aisles of the great cathedral, she was exalted and transported. The fitful fever cooled in her veins. She absorbed and drew into her own spirit the calm and silence of the place, and she was in turn abs

exulted in the consciousness of freedom and of kinship with these natural objects. With a sudden and impulsive movement, she drew near to the smooth trunk of a great beech, put her arms around it, laid her cheek against

smiling, and, heated with her journey, threw herself down by the side of the brook and plunged her face into its cool and sparkling waters. Then she lifted her head and carried the water to her lips in the palm of her dainty hand, and as she drank behe

leaves, brushwood and dead branches. Over it she suspended a tripod of sticks, and from this hung her iron kettle. Drawing from her pocket flint and steel, she struck them together, dropped a spark upon a piece of rotten wood, purred out her pretty cheeks and blew it into a flame. As the fire caught in the dry brushwood and began to leap heavenward, she followed it with her great brown eyes until it vani

erries, the lizard, the frog and the cricket. This part of her work completed, she sat dow

ing this song. As the last words die away Matizan wil

he parchment back into her bosom, and as the water began to bubble, leaped to her feet, threw her arms

in every dance, mysterious and p

of the sea dance because they are agitated by the wind. The little cork automaton upon the sounding board of a piano dances because it is agita

charges the body with electrical force, as by the touch of a

en distinguished from an automaton! She had brought her tambourine, and holding it on high with her left hand or extending it far forward, she t

ward the earth, resembled the stem of a lily over-weighted with its blossom; the next, a branch of a tree flung upward by

nature her own mood, or else to have communicated hers to it, for while she danced all else danced with her,

e began to boil. At the first ebullitions, she stood poised for an instant upon her toe, like the famous statue of Mercur

flower, she began to circle slowly around the fire and sing. The melo

ypsy camp, Ma

e futur

shiper, here in

his incens

zan, God of th

e smoke an

faran, Muzsub

, Omadar

as if suddenly turned to marble, stood in statuesque beauty, her arms extended, her lips parted, her

ure suddenly collapsed and sank upon the ground as the sail of a vesse

brook murmured to the grasses at its marge. No unearthly voice disturbed the tranquillity of the forest, and no unearthly presence appeared upon t

ssipated in a single instant, and the whole fabric

But while in his case the disappearance of faith had been followed by a sudden eruption of

not in any full degree comprehend his words; but that reiterated statement that "there is a light which lighteth every m

al, or at least her powers of reason had never been developed. She could not therefore think her way through these pathless regions over which she was now compelled to pass; she could only feel her way. The thoughts which began to course through her mi

e and she arose, an experience befell her

a long bright path of gold which a beam of the setting sun had thrown along the floor of the forest, like a

her instant did she regret the failure of the gypsy god to meet her. She knew well enough,

un. But she was not troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was coming was the one flowing thr

ld was faring homeward. Some universal impulse seemed to be driving them along their predestined paths, as it drove the brooks and the clouds, and Pepeeta appeared, as much as they, to be borne onward by a power above herse