Just
out of sight, through the still air I could hear the river, in
its rippling, flow past the bank at the top of which I sat. My
book hung in my hand, and the course of Universal History was
forgotten; while I mused and mused over the two sorts of
graves that lay around me, the two races, the diverse fate
that attended them; while one blue sky was over, and one
sunlight fell down. And "while I was musing, the fire burned,"
more fiercely than ever. David's had occasion when he wrote
those words. "Then spake I with my tongue." I would have liked
to do that. But I could do nothing; only pray.
I was very much startled while I sat in my muse, to bear a
footstep coming. A steady, regular, footstep; no light trip of
children; and the hands were in the field, and this was not a
step like any of them. My first thought was, the overseer!
come to spy me out. The next minute I saw through the trees
and the iron railings behind me, that it was not the overseer.
I knew _his_ wide-awake; and this head was crowned with some
sort of a cap.
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