FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   >>  
oded over the world. To Kent it was as if they were drifting through Paradise. Occasionally he found it necessary to work the big sweep, for still water was gradually giving way to a swifter current. Beyond that there was no labor for him to perform. It seemed to him that with each of these wonderful hours danger was being left farther and still farther behind them. Watching the shores, looking ahead, listening for sound that might come from behind--at times possessed of the exquisite thrills of children in their happiness--Kent and Marette found the gulf of strangeness passing swiftly away from between them. They did not speak of Kedsty, or the tragedy, or again of the death of John Barkley. But Kent told of his days in the North, of his aloneness, of the wild, weird love in his soul for the deepest wildernesses. And from that he went away back into dim and distant yesterdays, alive with mellowed memories of boyhood days spent on a farm. To all these things Marette listened with glowing eyes, with low laughter, or with breath that rose or fell with his own emotions. She told of her own days down at school and of their appalling loneliness; of childhood spent in the forests; of the desire to live there always. But she did not speak intimately of herself or her life in its more vital aspects; she said nothing of the home in the Valley of Silent Men, nothing of father or mother, sisters or brothers. There was no embarrassment in her omissions. And Kent did not question. He knew that those were among the things she would tell him when that promised hour came, the hour when he would tell her they were safe. There began to possess him now a growing eagerness for this hour, when they should leave the river and take to the forests. He explained to Marette why they could not float on indefinitely. The river was the one great artery through which ran the blood of all traffic to the far North. It was patrolled. Sooner or later they would be discovered. In the forests, with a thousand untrod trails to choose, they would be safe. He had only one reason for keeping to the river until they passed through the Death Chute. It would carry them beyond a great swampy region to the westward through which it would be impossible for them to make their way at this season of the year. Otherwise he would have gone ashore now. He loved the river, had faith in it, but he knew that not until the deep forests swallowed them, as a vast ocean
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158  
159   160   161   162   163   164   165   166   167   168   169   170   >>  



Top keywords:
forests
 

Marette

 

things

 

farther

 

eagerness

 
possess
 
growing
 

Valley

 
Silent
 

father


aspects

 

mother

 
sisters
 

promised

 
question
 

brothers

 
embarrassment
 
omissions
 

swampy

 

swallowed


region

 

westward

 

passed

 

impossible

 

ashore

 

season

 

Otherwise

 

keeping

 

reason

 

artery


traffic

 
indefinitely
 

patrolled

 

untrod

 

trails

 
choose
 

thousand

 
Sooner
 

discovered

 
explained

listening
 

shores

 
danger
 
Watching
 

strangeness

 

passing

 
swiftly
 

happiness

 
children
 

possessed