The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Kentucky Cardinal, by James Lane Allen

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Title: A Kentucky Cardinal

Author: James Lane Allen

Release Date: March 10, 2004 [eBook #11532]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A KENTUCKY CARDINAL***

This eBook produced by Jared Fuller.

A KENTUCKY CARDINAL _A Story_

by James Lane Allen

Dedication

This to her from one who in childhood used to stand at the windows
of her room and watch for the Cardinal among the snow-buried cedars.

I

All this New-year's Day of 1850 the sun shone cloudless but wrought
no thaw. Even the landscapes of frost on the window-panes did not
melt a flower, and the little trees still keep their silvery boughs
arched high above the jeweled avenues. During the afternoon a lean
hare limped twice across the lawn, and there was not a creature
stirring to chase it. Now the night is bitter cold, with no sounds
outside but the cracking of the porches as they freeze tighter.
Even the north wind seems grown too numb to move. I had determined
to convert its coarse, big noise into something sweet--as may
often be done by a little art with the things of this life--and so
stretched a horse-hair above the opening between the window sashes;
but the soul of my harp has departed. I hear but the comfortable
roar and snap of hickory logs, at long intervals a deeper breath
from the dog stretched on his side at my feet, and the crickets
under the hearth-stones. They have to thank me for that nook. One
chill afternoon I came upon a whole company of them on the western
slope of a woodland mound, so lethargic that I thumped them repeatedly
before they could so much as get their senses. There was a branch
near by, and the smell of mint in the air, so that had they been
young Kentuckians one might have had a clew to the situation. With
an ear for winter minstrelsy, I brought two home in a handkerchief,
and assigned them an elegant suite of apartments under a loose
brick.

But the finest music in the room is that which streams out to the
ear of the spirit in many an exquisite strain from the hanging shelf
of books on the opposit