Page:Bacheller--D'ri and I.djvu/366

D'RI AND I love, with the power of God in it to lift up, to ennoble; the other, love's counterfeit, a cunning device of the devil, with all his power to wreck and destroy, deceiving him that has taken it until he finds at last he has neither gold nor silver, but only base metal hanging as a millstone to his neck.

At dawn we got ashore on Battle Point. We waited there, Louise and I, while D'ri went away to bring horses. The sun rose clear and warm; it was like a summer morning, but stiller, for the woods had lost their songful tenantry. We took the forest road, walking slowly. Some bugler near us had begun to play the song of Yankee-land. Its phrases travelled like waves in the sea, some high-crested, moving with a mighty rush, filling the valleys, mounting the hills, tossing their spray aloft, flooding all the shores of silence. Far and near, the trees were singing in praise of my native land.

"Ramon," said Louise, looking up at me, a sweet and queenly dignity in her face, "I have come to love this country."

"And you could not have done so much for me unless you had loved—"