It was six hundred miles to the forests on the
Rockies' eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it
seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous sweetness was in the
glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of
rippling grass. It rolled away before her in billows of lustrous
silver-gray, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the
arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host
pressed on, company by company, towards the Pole.
The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness
that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes, for those who bear
the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the
reawakening, which in a little space of days dresses the waste, that
has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green.
It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler feels, and
the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant life. The girl felt
the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the
murmuring grasses and peeping flowerets did, but there was behind her
instinctive gladness a vague wonder and expectancy. She had read
widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and
now she was to be provided with the edifying spectacle of the gambler
and outcast turned farmer.
Had she been asked a few months earlier whether the man who had, as
Courthorne had done, cast away his honor and wallowed in the mire,
could come forth again and purge himself from the stain, her answer
would have been coldly skeptical, but now with the old familiar miracle
and what it symbolized before her eyes, the thing looked less
improbable.
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