Page:Dorothy Canfield--Hillsboro People.djvu/316

 all! They've danced them all away. And now, Piper Tim, hold your breath, for they'll be after comin' by, but all so still, so still! so you won't hear them and maybe think to open your eyes and see them—for that 'ud mean—sh! sh! Piper Tim, don't stir! ''They're here! They're here!''"

His eyes ached with the pressure of the strong little hands across them, his ears ached with straining them into the silence which lay about them. His heart beat fast with hope and then with certainty. Yes, it was no longer the thin, dead silence of the New England woods he knew so unhappily well. It was the still that comes with activity suspended. It was like the quivering quiet of a dancer, suddenly stricken motionless to listen for the sound of intruding footsteps. There was not the faintest sound, but the silence was full of that rich consciousness of life which marks the first awakening of a profound sleeper.

The hands were withdrawn from before his eyes, but he did not open them. He reached blindly for his pipes, and played "The Song of Angus to the Stars," tears of joy running from between his closed eyelids, to recognize in his own music the quality he had been starving for; the sense of the futile, poignant beauty, of the lovely and harmless tragedy, of the sweet, moving, gay sad meaning of things.

When he looked about him he was quite alone. Moira was gone, and the road lay white and still before him.

He did not see her all the next day, although he went down to the little house to do the household tasks his big