Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/102

 matter if a little insect like himself did splash around and flutter and become prey for large emotions?

"Nothing seems to be of much consequence down here," he mused. "I'm real funny with all my puny temper and pride!"

He laughed, not without a sigh, however. The magnificence which he had discovered in his mad flight—beautiful, wonderful, satisfying as it was—quite in course rendered his own thoughts conspicuously trivial. If he could bring his soul to humbleness, contented with inconsequence, here was contentment for him.

Other river people were tripping down that day. Ahead of him, two or three miles distant, barely visible on the vast, glowing surface, was one shantyboat; astern a mile or two was another one, hardly more conspicuous. No one touched an oar, and the eddyings swung the boats around and around, and carried them first toward one shore, then toward the other.

Not a breath of wind was stirring, and the sun shone down with caressing warmth. Hardly ever did a sound fret the silence, but at noon far and wide shrieked the whistles of cotton gins back on the bottoms, and somewhere in the distance—miles and miles away—rumbled the hoarse voice of some great sawmill with a battery of boilers feeding the growling horn.

The whistling quickened the appetite of the skiff