of those with whom he lived, but the beauty and sweetness of the token
appealed to him none the less. How beautiful, how sweet it was! As it
thus came drifting down with the river's deepening shadows, he thought
of the little band of Sisters--angels of charity--kneeling under that
rough roof; those brave gentlewomen of high birth and delicate breeding
who were come with the very first to take an heroic part in the making
of Kentucky and, so doing, in the winning of the whole West. As the boy
thought of them with a swelling heart,--for they had been kind to
him,--it seemed that they were braver than the hunters, more courageous
than the soldiers. Listening to the appeal of the Angelus stealing so
tenderly through the twilight, with the strain of poetry that was in him
thrilling in response, he felt that the prayers then going up must fill
the cruel wilderness with holy incense; that the coming of these gentle
Sisters must subdue the very wild beasts, as the presence of the lovely
martyrs subdued the lions of old.

"Ah, David! David!" cried a gay young voice behind him. "Dreaming
again--with your eyes wide open. And seeing visions, too, no doubt."

He turned with a guilty start and looked up at Ruth. She was standing
near by but higher on the river bank, and her slender white form was
half concealed by the drooping foliage of a young willow tree. There was
something about Ruth herself that always made him think of a young
willow with every graceful wand in bloom. And now--as nearly
always--there was a flutter of soft whiteness about her, for the day was
as warm as mid-summer. He could not have told what it was that she wore,
but her fluttering white garments might have been woven of the mists
training over the hills, so ethereal they looked, seen through the
golden green of the delicate willow leaves that were still gilded by
the afterglow which had vanished from the shadowed river. Her smiling