red by pieces of
shingle laid in the concrete, tip to tip. The final dressing, two inches
of pebble mortar, looked unpromising on account of its coating of white.
It would have hardened a dingy cement colour, instead of the deep,
sparkling grey desired, had we not thought of turning a fine spray from
the hose upon the newly trowelled surface to wash away the top cement.
To make sure, the surface was then lightly sponged until the pebble-tops
were absolutely without the clinging white. The water also erased the
least mark of the trowel.

The red insets were now tamped in with the trowel-handle, the unique
round edges appearing without a touch of stain. The rapidly hardening
mortar was not packed about the brick pieces, but the natural edge of
the grey preserved, as if they had been hurled in. They were placed
without immediate regularity, but with relation to the walk in its
length.... We regarded it afterward in the rain--all frames and shingles
removed, the loam and humus of the rose-soil softening the border--the
red rounded edges of the brick-insets gleaming out of the grey--a walk
that seemed to have been there a thousand years, the red pieces
seemingly worn by the bare feet of centuries.... It satisfied, and the
thought, too, that those who helped to do the work could not be quite
the same after that afternoon.

21

THE HIGHEST OF THE ARTS

One day at Chapel, neither the Abbot nor the Dakotan appeared. The
Columbian had left us. I looked up to see two young girls and another
there. One of the papers brought in that day was upon the joining of two
rivers. Where they came together was a whirlpool, a tremendous vortex
that hushed all surrounding Nature. In the lowlands that lay about the
place of that mighty meeting, a deep verdure came, for the winds carried
the spray from the vortex. Nature loved the sounds of that pouring
together. From the whirlpool, where two met, one great river emerged,
white-maned with rapids for a way--then broad and pure and still, so
that only birds and poets could hear the harmony deep as life. From time
to time it gave forth its tributaries, yet seemingly was undiminished.
Always on, always one, carrying all, making all pure, through the silent
places, past the great mountains--to the sea.

It was not until I had read of this mating of waters that I realised the
slightly different conditions in the Chapel, the young men not being
there.

... The strangest humility stole ov