Philip Verrill Mighels

“ For the last, ten days I have lived at last—I, in my paint that conceals me and deceives the child—I, that see the sun but once in a day—I, the morally dead! Begone. Draw no more from the spring in my withered breast, for it aches with every drop that, flows—it aches!—it aches'" and she struck herself on the bosom with the hand that held the punk, and the spark of light vibrated madly back and forth, making designs of fire-line in the gloom.
"With an aching spring in your heart how may you think on little Sucy, come to sale and to utter despair, a few years hence?" said Luey, ardently. ”

“ Then indeed all the earth was abandoned to the quiet little youngster and his still more quiet company of rabbits. There was no particular reason for moving. Where should he go, and how could he go, did he wish to leave? To carry his bunny would be quite beyond his strength; to leave him here would be equally beyond his courage.
But the sun was edging swiftly towards its hiding place; the frost of the mountain air was quietly sharpening its teeth. Already the long, gray shadow of the sage-brush fell like a cooling film across the little fellow's form and face. ”

“ It seemed a strange, impossible state, this peacefulness, security, and freedom to move about once more, alone in their Shalimar. And Grenville knew it was far too good to last.
Yet for several days it seemed as if the propitiating Fates made every possible endeavor to erase from the tablets of their memory all records of the agonies and apprehensions they had recently undergone.
They were wonderful days, for sheer inspiriting beauty. A cool, spicy breeze was wafted, with the sunshine, across the smiling ocean. The jungle was redolent of fragrances of intoxicating sweetness. ”

“ Man might build a palace of gold and brilliants, or Nature grow an edifice of leaves all resplendent with purples, reds, yellows and emeralds, but, when night spread her mantle, these gems of color and radiance might as well be of ebon. It is the sun that gilds, that burnishes, that lays on the tints of the mighty canvas; and when he goes, all color, all glitter and all beauty, save of form, have ceased to be.
Adam saw the trees standing dark and still, their great black limbs outstretched like arms, with upturned hands, suppliant for alms of weather. ”

“ In its place she saw such a look of yearning and worry—such a tenderness of love as no woman ever yet saw and failed to comprehend. She divined in that second that he knew who she was—she felt it, through all her sense of intuition and the fiber of her soul. She understood his insistence on the march, the saving march, straight onward without a halt. She loved him for it. She had loved him with wild intensity, confessed at last to herself, ever since the moment he had appeared in the desert to save her. ”

“ Man's little thought was expressed in the camp of Borealis, which appeared like a herd of small, brown houses, pitifully insignificant in all that immensity, and gathered together as if for company, trustfully nestling in the hand of the earth-mother, known to be so gentle with her children. On the hill-sides, smaller mining houses stood, each one emphasized by the blue-gray heap of earth and granite—the dump—formed by the labors of the restless men who burrowed in the rock for precious metal. ”

“ Wherever it rested, Nature met it with a smile. Adam felt like hugging a tree, yet no single tree was that elusive spirit of Nature which he so longed to clasp and to hold in his arms. But if he was mocked by the ethereal presence of beauty too diffuse to be held, by a redolence too subtle to be defined, and by bird notes too fleeting to be retained, yet he was charmed, caressed, sublimated by the omnipresence of Nature’s loveliness. ”

“ The child has brought me life. She is mine—all mine! She loves none other. And I have striven to be loved. You bid me quench even this spark of light by which I live and move in my darkness. I am not good. It is now too late to change. I cannot now be good or generous. I have exhausted my all of virtue in my strife to be loved."
Luey Mow was silent for a moment. Then he said: "And how shall little Sucy love you five and ten years hence, when pure, grateful lips should beg for thy peace from the gods?" ”

“ Grenville made no immediate reply. He was gazing abstractedly out across the water. His inner vision conjured up the picture of a brave, unselfish little comrade, swimming fearlessly out to board a raft whereon a helpless figure was lying—a pale-faced girl who would doubtless have had no hesitation had she known of all the sharks in the world. He could see her scramble on the float to ease him where he lay. And then her hot tussle with the clumsy oars, as she knelt on the wave-slopped platform, to urge it and him to the shore!
"I'm a thoughtless brute," he told her, finally. ”

“ Before six o'clock that morning, while Van was arousing the blacksmith, the reservation madness broke its bounds. Twenty-five hundred gold-blinded men made the rush for coveted grounds.
The night had been one long revel of drinking, gambling, and excitement. No one had slept in the reservation town—for no one had dared. Bawling, singing, and shouting, the jollier element had shamed the coyotes from the land. Half a thousand camp fires had flared all night upon the plain. The desert had developed an oasis of flowing liquors, glaring lights, and turmoil of life, lust, and laughter. ”

“ THE GERM OF A PASSION. A bonnie little Puritan maid, Mistress Garde Merrill, stood in the open doorway at her home, fervently hugging her kitten. The sunlight seemed almost like beaten gold, so tangibly did it lay upon the house, the vines that climbed the wall, and the garden full of old-fashioned flowers.
A few leaves, which had escaped from the trees, in a longing to extend their field of romping, were being whirled about in a brisk zephyr that spun in a corner. A sense of warmth and fragrance made all the world seem wantoning in its own loveliness. ”

“ The stunted brush stiffly carded the breeze that blew so persistently.
From rock to rock the gray old miner's gaze went wandering. So undisturbed had been the surface of the earth since he had owned the claim that a shallow channel, sluiced in the earth by a freshet of the spring long past, remained as the waters had cut it. Slowly up the course of this insignificant cicatrice old Jim ascended, his hands still held beneath his arms, his long mustache and his grizzled beard blown awry in the breeze. The pick he left behind. ”

“ It was nearly nine o'clock when at last the hum of excited expectation in the crowded streets of Chinatown became abruptly pregnant of news that the dragon was fairly afoot.
A din of clashing brass and beaten drums arose like a demon's alarm on the vibrant air. Chinese music, triumphant and sufficiently awful to affright the most intrepid demon, had broken from the instruments in charge of Oriental virtuosos. Excitement billowed like sea waves, heaving through the mass of humanity that thronged the streets. ”

“ Then Elaine, too, saw the black, irregular stripes, the huge, topaz eyes, and the lazy movement of a mighty shoulder muscle, as the beast before them arose and blocked their path.
It was not the fact that he had rarely if ever seen a tiger so large that most impressed the man, thus unexpectedly confronted by this unfrightened monarch of the island—the brute bore a collar about his neck, gleaming with gold and the facets of some sort of jewels!
He had obviously once been a captive! He knew the form of man, if not his nature! ”

“ Van was once more in his saddle. He started, and the ponies behind resumed their faithful plodding at his heels.
A few rods ahead they encountered a change, and Beth could scarcely repress a gasp of surprise and apprehension. The trail was laid upon the merest granite shelf, above that terrible chasm. She was terrified, frankly. The man and pony in the lead were cut with startling sharpness against the gray of the rock—the calico coloring, the muscular intensity, the bending of the man to every motion—as they balanced with terrifying slenderness above the pit of death. ”

“ Scuttling swiftly to the side of the ship and then bawling orders, and chasing to the armory in hot haste, Phipps, Adam and the others yelled that a pirate was upon them. The words, like an incantation of marvelous potency, summoned men like so many gnomes, from hatches, companion-ways and fo’castle, on the instant.
The brig’s deck suddenly swarmed with its own men, running hither and thither, shouting, stumbling, swearing, while Phipps and Rust came darting back with arms full of cutlasses, pistols and muskets, gathered helter-skelter, and now thrown with a great clatter upon the planking. ”

“ Elaine, even more than Grenville, was bursting with explosive breath when, at length, the raft came twisting once more to the chill, sweet region of the gale. And even then strong currents drew it fiercely in their wake before it rode freely on the waters.
Dripping and gasping, Grenville half rose to scan the troubled billows for companions in distress. Not a sound could he hear, save the swash of the waves. Not a light appeared in all that void, save the distant, indifferent stars. ”

“ Then, praying to all-but-forgotten Chinese gods to give her grace, she once again, in fear and eagerness, approached her silent little companion and begged her to be friends.
All day she coaxed and wooed and smiled—her lost arts of softness returning uncertainly, like lost or wayward lambs. At the end little Sucy slipped quietly into the outheld arms—doll and all—and felt the bosom where she lay toss painfully with sobs that could not find an exit large enough to let them issue forth.
When Fate sits down at her loom to weave, she loveth a closely knit design. ”

“ Like joy of bubbling water in a brook, it rippled in music never before awakened. Old Jim and Miss Doc looked at each other in complete amazement, but the little fellow laughed and laughed and laughed. His heart was overflowing, suddenly, with all the laughing and joy that had never before been invited to his heart. The other youngsters joined him in his merriment, and so did the preacher and pretty Mrs. Stowe; and so did Jim and Miss Doc, but these two laughed with tears warmly welling from their eyes. ”

“ The hill was like a torn-up battlefield, trenched, and piled with earthworks of defense, for man the impetuous had already flung up great gray dumps of rock, broken and wrenched from the bulk of the slope, where he quested for gleaming yellow metal. He had ripped out the adamant—the matrix of the gold—for as far as Beth could see. Like ant-heaps of tremendous dimensions stood these monuments of toil—rock-writings, telling of the heat and desire, the madness of man to be rich. ”