In a voice which had something of the
tremulousness of age and the self-satisfied chuckle of imbecility
in it, he asked, pointing to the rising moon, "Why?--hush!"
He had dodged behind me, and appeared to be looking anxiously down
the road. I could feel his aged frame shaking with terror as he
laid his thin hands upon my shoulders and faced me in the direction
of the supposed danger.
"Hush! did you not hear them coming?"
I listened; there was no sound but the soughing of the roadside
trees in the evening wind. I endeavored to reassure him, with such
success that in a few moments the old weak smile appeared on his
benevolent face.
"Why?--" But the look of interrogation was succeeded by a hopeless
blankness.
"Why!" I repeated with assuring accents.
"Why," he said, a gleam of intelligence flickering over his face,
"is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean, casting a flood
of light o'er hill and dale, like-- Why," he repeated, with a
feeble smile, "is yonder moon, as she sails in the blue empyrean--"
He hesitated,--stammered,--and gazed at me hopelessly, with the
tears dripping from his moist and widely opened eyes.
I took his hand kindly in my own.
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