Читать книгу Gleaner Tales онлайн

26 страница из 76

The Indian fell prostrate before the gaunt pillar of stone to which he spoke and lay there for some time. When he rose, there was a weary look in his impassive features. “The Spirit has spoken: he tells Hemlock he will answer him in a dream.” Advancing towards Morton he lay down and fell asleep.

High above him shafts of sunlight were interwoven with the foliage of the trees that overhung the crest of the chasm, forming a radiant ceiling, when Morton awoke. The weirdly romantic gulf in which he lay, coupled with the strange scenes of the night, caused him to think the past was a dream, but going over the several details the sense of reality was restored, and there, a few feet from him, was stretched the sinewy form of the Indian. “Who could fancy that a being so stolid, heavy, and matter-of-fact,” asked Morton of himself, “should show such keenness of feeling and so active an imagination? And, yet, how little we know of what sleeps in the bosoms of our fellows. Mark that sullen pool above the cataract! How dead and commonplace its water appears. It is swept over the brink and, breaking into a hundred new forms, instantly reveals there dwelt dormant beneath its placid surface a life and a beauty undreamt of. We are not all as we seem, and so with this much-tried son of the forest.”