The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-11-09
And again as before the Fighting
Forty hnMIed truculentlV:


Forty howled truculently:
"Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
The words were vulgar, the air a
mere minor chant. Yet Thorpe's mind
was stiTled. His aroused sub-conscious-
ness had been engaged in reconstruct
ing these men entire as their songs
voiced rudely the inner characteristics
of their beings. Now his spirit halted.
Their bravery, pride of caste, resource,
bravado, boastfulness-all these he had
checked off approvingly. Here now was
the idea of the mate. Somewhere for
each of them was Kitty" daisy
Sunday best-day girl" At the present
or in the past these woods rofsterers,
this Fighting Forty, had known love.
Thorpe arose abruptly and turned at
random into the forest. The song pur-
sued him as he went.
81 took her to a dance one night,
A mossback gave the bidding
Silver Jack bossed the shebang,
And Big Dan played the fiddle.
We danced and drank the livelong
night
With fights between the dancing,
Till Silver Jack cleaned out the ranch
And sent the mossbacks prancing "
And with the increasing war and tur-
MOL of the quick water the last shout
of the Fighting Forty mingled family
and was lost.
'Bung yer eye! bung yer eye!"
Thorpe found himself at the edge of
the woods facing a little glade into
which streamed the radiance of a full
moon
There he stood and looked silently,
not understanding, not caring to in
quire. Across the way a white-throat
was singing, clear, beautiful like the
shadow of dream. The girl stood lis
tening.
Her small fair head was inclined ever
so little sideways and her finger was
on her lips as though she wished to
still the very hush of night, to which
impression the inclinati ton of her sup
pie body lent it's grace. The moon
light shone full upon her countenance.
A little white face it was, with wide
clear eyes and sensitive, proud mouth
that now half parted like a child's. Her
eyebrows arched from her straight nose
in the peculiarly graceful curve that
falls just short of pride on the one
side and of power on the other, to fill
the eyes with a pathos of trust and
innocence. The man watching could
catch the poise of her long white neck
and the molten moon-fire from her
tumbled hair-the color of corn-silk,
but finer.
Behind her lurked the low, even
shadow of the forest where the moon
was not. a band of velvet against
which the girl and the touched
twigs and bushes and grass blades were
etched like frost against black win
dow pane. There was something, too,
of the frostwork's evanescent spiritual
quality in the scene-as though at any
moment, with a buff of the balmy sum
mer wind, the radiant glade, the hover
ing figure, the filagreed silver of the
entire setting would melt into the ac-
customed stern and menacing forest OF
the northland, with it's wolves, and its
wild deer, and the voices of it's sterner
calling.
Thorpe held his breath and waited.
Again the white-throat lifted his clear
spiritual note across the brightness
slow, trembling with ecstasy. The girl
never moved. She stood in the moon
light like a beautiful emblem of
silence, half real. half fancy, part wo-
man. wholly divine, listening to the lit
tie birds message.
For the third time the song shivered
across the night; then Thorpe with a
soft sob, dropped his face in his hands
and looked no more.
To Be Continued Next Sunday.