Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/225

215 Thus, though, because of their reserved natures, they were never companions, yet their lives drifted pleasantly on side by side, up to the time of their fortieth year. It was upon that day that their fate overtook them and flung a stone into their life's river that destroyed the flow for ever, and made turbulence and raging billows where once the calm had been.

On the morning of the tenth in a spring month, the brothers rose with a feeling of exhilaration. The glory of the day, the singing of the mated birds, the gold of the new-born blossoms, all made them realize the sweetness of life. They felt that spring was theirs too, as it was—glory as fair as brief—with promise as a beginning and storm and desolation as an ending; like two trees that put forth green leaves in the sunshine, only later to have them torn and destroyed, and they themselves fall stricken by the storm to earth.

With quiet feeling the brothers clasped hands on the morning of the tenth. "A happy birthday to you, brother." "And to you." They went their ways with no passing