Five Mile Beach weekly journal., 1914-06-05
CHAPTER xxxv.
The Song Of the NIohtInoale.

Along the dark turnpike John Val
liant rode with his chin sunk on his
breast. He was wretchedly glad of
the darkness, for 1t covered a thou
sand familiar sights he had grown to
love. Yet through the dark came
drifting sounds that caught at him
with clutching hands-the bay of a
hound from some far-off kennel, the
whirring note of frogs, the impatient
high whinny of a horse across pasture
bars-and his nostrils widened to the
wild braided fragrance of the fields
over which the mist was spinning its
fairy carded wool.
The preparations for his going had
been quickly made. He was leaving
behind him all but a single portman-
teau. Uncle Jefferson had already
taken this-with Chum-to the sta
ton. The old man had now gone sor.
rowfully afoot to the blockhouse, a
half-mile up the track, to bespeak the
stopping of the express. He would go
back on the horse his master was
riding.
The lonely little depot fanked a
siding beside a dismal stretch of yell
low clay-bank gouged by rains. Its
windows were dark and the weather.
beaten plank platform was illuminated
by a single lantern that hung on a
nail beside the locked door, its sickly
flame showing bruise-like through
smoky streakings Of lamp-black. At
n side, In the shadow, was his bag,
and beside 1t the tethered bulldog
sole spot Of white against the melan-
choly ~forlornness = Lying with one
splinted leg. like a swaddled ramrod,
sticking straight out before him.
In the saddle, Valiant struck his
hand hard against his knee. Surely
1t was a dream! 1t could not be that
he was leaving Virginia, leaving Dam
DRY court, leaving her! But he knew
that 1t was not a dream.
Far away, rounding Powhattan
Mountain, he heard the l~ong-drawn
boot of the coming train flinging it's
sky-warning in a host of scampering
echoes. Among them mixed another
sound of a horse, galloping fast and
hard.
His w fidgeted, flung up wide nos
trils and neighed shrilly. Who was
coming along that runnelled highway
at such an hour in such breakneck
fashion?
The train was nearer now; he could
hear its low rumbling hum, rising
to a roar, and the click and spring of
the rails. But though he lifted a foot
from the stirrup, he did not dismount.
Something In the whirlwind speed of
coming caught and held him notion
less. He had a sudden curious feeling
that all the world beside did not ex-
list; there were only the sweeping
rush of the nearing train-impersonal,
unhuman-he, sitting his horse in the
gloom, and that unknown rider whose
anguish of speed outstripped the
steam, riding-to whom?
The road skirted the track as 1t
neared the station, and all at once a
white glare from the opened fire-box
flung itself blindingly across the dark,
illuminating like a flare of summer
lightning the patch Of highway and
the rider. Valiant, staring, had an in
stant's vision Of a streaming cloak, Of
a girls face, set in a tawny swirl Of
loosened hair. With a cry that was
lost in the shrek of escaping steam,
he dragged his plunging horse around
and the white blaze swept him also, as
the rider pulled down at his side.
"You!" he cried. He leaned and
caught the slim hands gripped on the
bride, shaking now. "Youi"
The dazzling brightness had gone
by, and the air was full of the groan-
ing of the brakes as the long line Of
darkened sleepers shuddered to its
enforced stop. "Johni"- He heard
the sweet wild cry pierce through the
tumble of noises, and something in It
set his blood running molten through
his veins. 1t held an agony Of relief.