Page:Tales of the White Hills.djvu/41

Rh that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway,&mdash;though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him.

&ldquo;As yet,&rdquo; cried the stranger&mdash;his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm&mdash;&ldquo;as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you: that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saco, and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, &lsquo;Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go?&rsquo; But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my monument!&rdquo;

There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing forth amid abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this young man&rsquo;s sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed.

&ldquo;You laugh at me,&rdquo; said he, taking the eldest daughter&rsquo;s hand, and laughing himself. &ldquo;You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that people might spy at me from the country round about. And, truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue!&rdquo;

&ldquo;It is better to sit here by this fire,&rdquo; answered the girl, blushing, &ldquo;and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us.&rdquo;