He stared about, gaspily. The afternoon was
waning. The mountains close at hand were a darker green. The
distant ranges had assumed a rosy amethystine tint, like nothing
earthly--like the mountains of a dream, perhaps. The buzzard had
alighted in the top of a tree not far down the slope, a tree long
ago lightning-scathed, but still rising, gaunt and scarred, above
all the forest, and stretching dead stark arms to heaven. Somehow
Rufe did not like the looks of it. He was aware of a revulsion of
feeling, of the ebbing away of his merry spirit before he saw more.
As he tried to sing: -
I war the mightiest hunter that ever ye see
Till that thar catamount tuk arter me! -
his tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth.
He could see something under that tree which no one else could see,
not even from the summit of the crags, for the tree was beyond a
projecting slope, and out of the range of vision thence.
Rufe could not make out distinctly what the object was, but it was
evidently foreign to the place. He possessed the universal human
weakness of regarding everything with a personal application. It
now seemed strange to him that he should have come here at all;
stranger still, that he should have mounted this queer relic of days
so long gone by, and thus discovered that peculiar object under the
dead tree. He began to think he had been led here for a purpose.
Now Rufe was not so good a boy as to be on the continual lookout for
rewards of merit.
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