or, because it was only a picture. We never saw women dressed
in that style. We knew that women did not take journeys through woods
without bonnet or shawl, and we spread a veil of ignorant, indifferent
incredulity over the whole. But as we grow up, printed words take on new
life. The latent fire in them lights up and glows. The mystic words throb
with vital heat, and burn down into our souls to an answering fire. As we
stand, on this soft summer day, by the old tree which tradition declares
to have witnessed that fateful scene, we go back into a summer long ago,
but fair and just like this. Jane McCrea is no longer a myth, but a young
girl blooming and beautiful with the roses of her seventeen years. Farther
back still, we see an old man's darling, little Jenny of the Manse, a
light-hearted child, with sturdy Scotch blood leaping in her young
veins,--then a tender orphan, sheltered by a brother's care,--then a
gentle maiden, light-hearted no longer, heavy-freighted, rather, but with
a priceless burden,--a happy girl, to whom love calls with stronger voice
than brother's blood, stronger even than life. Yonder in the woods lurk
wily and wary foes. Death with unspeakable horrors lies in ambush there;
but yonder also stands the soldier lover, and possible greeting, after
long, weary absence, is there. What fear can master that overpowering
hope? Estrangement of families, political disagreement, a separated
loyalty, all melt away, are fused together in the warmth of girlish love.
Taxes, representation, what things are these to come between two hearts?
No Tory, no traitor is her lover, but her own brave hero and true knight.
Woe! woe! the eager dream is broken by mad war-whoops! Alas! to those
fierce wild men, what is love, or loveliness? Pride, and passion, and the
old accursed hunger for gold flame up in their savage breasts. Wrathful,
loathsome fingers clutch the long, fair hair that even the fingers of love
have caressed but with reverent half-touch,--and love, and hope, and life
go out in one dread moment of horror and despair. Now, through the
reverberations of more than fourscore years, through all the tempest-rage
of a war more awful than that, and fraught, we hope, with a grander joy, a
clear, young voice, made sharp with agony, rings through the shuddering
woods, cleaves up through the summer sky, and wakens in every heart a
thrill of speechless pain. Along these peaceful banks I see a bowed form
walking, youth in his