Page:Mehalah 1920.djvu/217

Rh they were cold and hungry and could not sleep. Anyone not knowing what stirred would have supposed that mice were holding revel in the attics. There yonder on the marsh was something very white, like paper, flapping and flashing in the moonlight. What could it be? It moved a little way, then blew up and fell and flapped again. Was it a sheet of paper? If so how came it not to be swept away by the rushing wind. No, it was no sheet of paper. Mehalah's curiosity was roused. She opened the window and looked out. At the same moment it rose, fluttered nearer, eddied up, and fell again. A cloud drifted over the moon and made the marsh grey, and in the shadow the restless object was lost, the flash of white was blotted over. When the moon gleamed out again, she saw it once more. It did not move. The wind tore by, and shook the casement in her hand, but did not lift and blow away that white object. Then there was a lull. The air was still for a moment. At that moment the white object moved again, rose once more and fluttered up, it was flying, it was nearing,—it fell on the roof of the bakehouse under the window. Now Mehalah saw what this was. It was the wounded gull, the bird Rebow had shot. The miserable creature was struggling with a broken wing, and with distilling blood, to escape to sea, to die, and drop into the dark, tossing, foaming waves, to lose itself in infinity. It could not expire on the land, it must seek its native element, the untamed, unconfined sea; it could not give forth its soul on the trampled, reclaimed, hedged-in earth. Was it not so with Glory? Could her free soul rest where she now was? Could it endure for ever this tyranny of confinement within impalpable walls? She who had lived, free as a bird, to be blown here and there by every impulse, when every impulse was fresh and pure as the unpolluted breath of God that rushes over the ocean. Was she not wounded by the same hand that had brought down the white mew? There she was fluttering, rising a little, again falling, her heart dim with tears, her life's vigour bleeding away, the white of her bosom smeared with soil that adhered, as she draggled in the mire, into which he had cast her. Whither was she tending? She turned