Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/215

Rh as ships riding on a sea of emerald. On either side the vine-clad hills ascended to pine-dotted ranges amongst which white-fleeced sheep were moving. The smoke hanging in the clear atmosphere above lines of cottages told of good meals preparing, with which the housewife would cheer those regretting their loss.

On the vessel speeded, past Hygeia, where convalescents waved the spade with which they were playing; past Kokiana and Fabricia, where hundreds turned out to rend the air with acclamations. All the while, he who had clad the waste with gardens and peopled the lonely plain with rejoicing sons of labour, took up, now one, then another of the flowers he had made to grow in the wilderness, and cast them into the water, until from the quay, across the unrippled bosom of the lake, through the Harrow winding of the canal, out on to the broad waters of the Silverbourne, extended a sinuous line of floating flowers, about which the birds dipped and fishes leaped, connecting the lonely man at the taffrail with the scenes of homely industry he was leaving behind.

When would his good ship plough that floral path again? Flowers would it be, or tangling weeds of sorrow and care that, returning, the boat would cast from her bow?