a man of scant and narrow experience, his world the
impenetrable mountain wilderness, and, though seemingly the pupil of
nature, versed in the ways of beast and bird, the signs of the clouds,
the seasons of bourgeoning and burr, it was but of casual external
aspects. He knew naught of its wondrous history, its subtler
significance, its strange record--the flood-tides registered on that
cliff beyond the laurel; the reptilian trail in the ledge beneath the
butt of his rifle, the imprint still fast in the solid rock, albeit
the species extinct; the great bones of ancient unknown beasts sunk in
the depressions of this saline quagmire, which herds of them had once
frequented for the salt, as did of late the buffalo, and now the
timorous deer, wont to come, like shadows wavering in the wind, to
lick the briny earth. The strange, glinting blade overhead had no
claim on his recognition as the "comet of Aristotle," or the
"evil-disposed comet" personified by the Italians as Sir Great-Lance,
_il Signor Astone_, or Halley's comet, or Donati's. Self is the centre
of the solar system with many souls, and around this point do all its
incidents revolve. For _him_ that wondrous white fire was kindled in
the skies, for _him_, in special relation to his small life, to the
wish nearest his hot human heart, to the clumsy scheme dear to his
slow, crude brain. He thought it a warning then: and later he thought
this still.

Some vague stir--the wind perhaps, or perhaps a light-footed
dryad--flitted past and was gone. The surface of the "lick" rippled
with her footprints, and was smooth again. All the encompassing masses
of trees and undergrowth about the place were densely black and
opaque, giving the sense of absolute solidity and weight, except upon
the verges, which were somehow shaded off into a cloudy brown against
the translucent dove-tinted tissues in which the night seemed
enveloped and obscured save for the white gleaming of the stars. This
was the clear color that the brackish water wore as it reflected the
night. It reflected suddenly a face--a face with a long velvety
muzzle, a pair of spreading antlers, and dark eyes, gentle, timorous,
liquidly bright. The water stirred with a sibilant lapping sound as
the buck's tongue licked at the margin. Once he held up his head to
listen, with his hoof lifted, then he bent again to the ripples. There
was slight relation between him, the native of these woods, and that
wayward waif of the sk