Free Silver Wings by Grace Livingston Hill Page B

where great rocks wore velvet moss and gray lichens, and where great trees canopied and arched above, harboring a silver-toned thrush or two to send a wild sweet note upward now and then, even when there was no ear but God’s to hear.
    She walked quietly, for she wished to come on her quarry unawares, and stealing through the cool shadows of the wooded hillside in her Robin Hood green, she seemed like a part of the landscape. No one would have noticed her, not even a bird or a chipmunk would have fled from her, because she looked like one of them, and quite as if she might have been cousin to a tree. So going, she came at last to where she sighted them sitting silently together on a rock, the young man and the boy, their lines dropped, their faces intent, the filtering sunbeams touching their heads with flecks of light and bringing out their statuelike attitudes.
    She dropped down silently behind a group of cedars where she was not visible and watched them intently awhile. As motionless as the fishers, she sat and studied the man to whom she meant to lay siege.
    It surprised her that he was so well built and that his head was so finely shaped. She somehow had expected him to be of the ascetic type, and awkward. His aunt had intimated that he had had few advantages, and she had supposed, of course, that this would show in his general attitude.
    But this man was no awkward youth.
    Of course, if he had been brought up in the country—she was not sure if Mrs. Whitney had said he had—he would naturally be more at his ease in overalls on the brink of a stream fishing than in evening clothes in a salon. But this man had an innate grace about him that held her admiration, and when he suddenly jerked up his line and landed a great fish on the bank beside him, to the exquisite joy of his young companion, his hearty laugh rang out with a cultured note that surprised her. But of course, a preacher! He must have studied somewhere and been with cultured people at least for a time. She ought to have thought of that. Well, that only made her task easier.
    For a long time she sat and watched him, noting his kindly way with the boy, noting the admiration in Neddy’s eyes and the hearty way the man accepted him as a pal, without the least condescension or impatience. Then she slowly, stealthily, arose and began her soft descent to the bank opposite the two on the rock. She noted carefully the lay of the land. The stream narrowed just across from the rock where the man and the boy sat. There were clumps of laurel and hemlock clustering thickly on her side of the stream.
    She descended carefully, a step or two at a time, taking pains not to step on a dry twig or a loose stone, and she kept persistently behind trees and bushes. So descending, she finally reached their level behind the foliage and, parting almost imperceptibly the branches, was able at last to wedge herself between the hemlocks and get her head and shoulders into full view without having disturbed the two intent fishers. A chameleon could have done no better.
    So there she stood before them in her perfect setting: olive-green, a vivid little face under the Robin Hood soft hat with the jade lights in her eyes and the flecks of sunlight caught in her eyelashes. She could not have made it more perfect if she had hired the scenery painted for this her first act in the farce she was to play. Or was it to be a tragedy? She had scarcely planned so far. And so she stood and waited for the right moment and the curtain to rise.
    The curtain rose when Ned landed his first fish, swinging his line in a great circle and bellowing his voice out so loud it frightened the thrushes far above. Two laughs rang out—a young joyous one and an older happy one, blending as if they enjoyed each other and loved the day. Two laughs like music, that suddenly stopped with a crash in the middle and brought a silence that almost hurt.
    While it hurt and held, a thrush high up gave a fluted, faraway note,