Beggars on Horseback

nt in the place in the wa

ting. I'm sort of fused with you as I write. I'm not here-or even in the future with you-as you read, for I've pulled the future to me and made it now, now, now, and I'm with you, in the present, as you read this, and I'm drawing your tired head to me, and I feel the very way the thick stuff of your coat arches up under the pressure of my arm. I am you in every bit of me as I write; not yours, but you. But, for the future, in that way only. I felt nothing wrong in all I gave you here, because you needed what I had to give and we were hurting nobody. I'm sure that's the great thing, to hurt nobody, and that includes you and even

phi

*

m her being was absorbed in his and so her own feelings had no room for conscious movement until afterwards. There are times, when affairs are at the crest, when, by its intensity, sensation seems numb, but all the while each little thing seen by both inward and outward vision is registered on the mind with peculiar sharpness of edge; only to be realized when the wave of incident has passed, and even then a period of numbness may intervene before realization enters the soul, deep-driven by the intolerance of memory. Sophia was living in that tense numbness now, but through it external things made their potency felt. She grew to know every corner of the little town, and during the day she would wander sev

tinct of enclosure was in the idea, and Sophia had a sudden fancy to make the unconscious town her own by the old method. Without thinking of much beyond the physical act, she started along the little track noting idly yet definitely the look of the stones along the spreading base of the fortifications and the sickles of light made by the sky's reflection on the curving-over grass blades on the other side of the path. She went s

nd, looking from such a standpoint, would have to concentrate on one thing at a time if it wanted to attain any idea bu

hout guessing anything of the thoughts and feelings. And yet, surely those emotions could not die. . . . Perhaps, one evening, a workman, straightening his back and drawing his hand over his wet forehead, had looked towards the sunset, and in the vague irrational way some scenes are registered on the mind for always, that aspect of sky and darkening hedge against it would stay in his memory, oddly mixed with the feel of the wet drops on his hand and the easing of the muscles across his back, to be recalled by any similar moment for the rest of his life. If so, how steeped with humanity those few yards of steel would be! And, apart from the emotions connected with it by the sense of sight, what an important part the railroad must play to the men and t

r cheek against the rough stone of the wall, then s

her discovery meant, or of how the garden would bring the final revelation to her, but even then she felt the soothing

Forbidd

ave you half-

outhern land

p among her hi

dered gardens,

the Christs han

a-grey slopes

le, from the c

shadows on th

ardened lava

hirlpools, with

ows, like mammoth

ster of crea

nar landscape

kindlier whim o

ght echo to a

ress nymph wit

s that valley

led senses sli

ught reflections

ing scales throug

n strung on a r

wings the air i

leaming arc bl

rosy films ag

uted roof we

ry hut; an

ar to comrade

ls were names

e our bread and

of Fellowshi

vious gods, and

nst a stone, our

castle set in

hough upon

man tang that

tful things;

k-curtained beds,

t us watch the

slats their light

th the ash be g

daily trouble

miles have set

ittle castle

two girl-childr

, I need neve

hollow curves b

oulder, draw y

's lid droops, th

of you I ca

e world's door

beat for us;

r to the child

p is good when

tender for i

ack of fetter

y, my dear, and

mmons to that friendship in which she could have given as richly as in love; and for which, altho