Page:Ballantyne--The wild Man of the West.djvu/108

100 The artist's hand moved involuntarily to the pouch in which he was wont to carry his sketch book, but he did not draw it forth; his soul was too deeply absorbed in admiration to permit of his doing aught but gaze in silence.

"This repays my toils," he resumed, soliloquizing rather than speaking to March. Twere worth a journey such as I have taken, twice repeated, to witness such a scene as this."

"Ay, aint it grand?" said March, delighted to find such congenial enthusiasm in the young painter.

Bertram turned his eyes on his companion, and, in doing so, observed the wild rose at his side.

"Ah! sweet rose," he said, stooping eagerly down to smell it,

"He was no poet who wrote that, anyhow," observed March, with a look of disdain.

"You are wrong, friend. He was a good poet and true."

"Do you mean to tell me that the sweetness o' that rose is wasted here?"

"Nay, I do not say that. The poet did not mean to imply that its sweetness is utterly wasted, but to assert the fact that, as far as civilized man is concerned, it is so."

Civilized man, echoed March, turning up