Page:In bad company and other stories.djvu/473



moon has waxed and waned, yet one may not, in 1883, recall with the poet

inasmuch as that month in these Southern wilds is for the most part a gleesome, companionable time, rich in flower-birth and fruit-promise. None the less, if the windows of heaven be not the sooner opened, the present year of our Lord will be aught but immemorial in the chronicles of the land.

Surely the blessed dews of heaven, the rain for which in these arid wastes all Nature cries aloud, will not long be denied. How clearly can we realise the force of the strong Saxon of the Vulgate, 'And the famine was sore in the land.'

Here now exists the same hopeless, long-protracted absence of all moisture which drove the Patriarch to ' travel 'with his flocks and herds, viz. camels and she-asses, his sons and their families, from dried-out Canaan to the rich 'frontage' of the Nile.

Here, as then, in that far historic dawn, is dust where grass grew and water ran. Strange birds crowd the scanty pools, while among the great hordes of live stock, reared in plenteous seasons, the strong are lean and sad-eyed, the weak are perishing daily with increasing rapidity.

The hand of man, which has done so much to reclaim these wondrous wastes, is powerless against Nature's cruel fiat. None can do more than wait and pray ; for the end must come, when the days shorten and the nights grow cold, even in this