Had the mistress of Champ-au-Haut stood on the terrace a few minutes
longer, she might have seen with those far-sighted eyes of hers a dark
form passing quickly along the strip of highroad that showed white
between the last houses at The Bow. It was Father Honore. He walked
rapidly along the highway that, skirting the base of the mountain,
follows the large curve of the lake shore. Rapid as was the pace, the
quickened eyes were seeing all about, around, above. In passing beneath
a stretch of towering pines, he caught between their still indefinite
foliage the gleam of the lake waters. He stopped short for a full minute
to pommel his resonant chest; to breathe deep, deep breaths of the night
balm. Then he proceeded on his way.
That way led northwards along the lake shore; it skirted the talus that
had fallen from the cliff which rose three hundred feet above him. He
heard the sound of a rolling stone gathering in velocity among the
rubble. He halted in order to listen; to trace, if possible, its course.
The dull monotone of its rumbling rattle started a train of thought:
perhaps his foot, treading the highway lightly, had caused the sensitive
earth to tremble just sufficiently to jar the delicately poised stone
and send it from its resting place! He went on. Thoughts not to be
uttered crowded to the forefront of consciousness as he neared the cleft
in the Flamsted Hills, whence the Rothel makes known to every wayfarer
that it has come direct from the heart of The Gore, and brought with it
the secrets of its granite veins.
The road grew steeper; the man's pace did not slacken, but the straight
back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to
mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor
twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight
sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its
rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ceased, an owl
broke the silence with his "witti-hoo-hoo-hoo".
Still upwards he kept his way and his pace until he emerged into the
full moonlight of the heights. There he halted and looked about him. He
was near the apex of The Gore. To the north, above the foreground of the
sea of hilltops, loomed Katahdin. At his right, a pond, some five acres
in extent, lay at the base of cliff-like rocks topped with a few
primeval pines. Everywhere there were barren sheep pastures alternating
with acres of stunted fir and hemlock, and in sheltered nooks, adjacent
to these coverts, he could discern something which he judged to be stone
sheepfolds. Just below him, on the opposite side of the road and the
Rothel, which was crossed by a broad bridging of log and plank, stood a
long low stone house, to the north of which a double row of firs had
been planted for a windbreak. Behind him, on a rise of ground a few rods
from the highway, was a large double house of brick with deep granite
foundations and white granite window caps. Two shafts of the same stone
supported the ample white-painted entrance porch. Ancestral elms
over-leafed the roof on the southern side. One light shone from an upper
window. Beyond the elms, a rough road led still upwards to the heights
behind the house.
The priest retraced his steps; turned into this road, for which the
landlord of The Greenbush had given him minute instructions, and
followed its rough way for an eighth of a mile; then a sudden turn
around a shoulder of the hill--and the beginning of the famous Flamsted
granite quarries lay before him, gleaming, sparkling in the moonlight--a
snow-white, glistening patch on the barren hilltop. Near it were a few
huts of turf and stone for the accommodation of the quarrymen. This was
all. But it was the scene, self-chosen, of this priest's future labors;
and while he looked upon it, thoughts unutterable crowded fast, too fast
for the brain already stimulated by the time and environment. He turned
about; retraced his steps at the same rapid pace; passed again up the
highroad to the head of The Gore, then around it, across a barren
pasture, and climbed the cliff-like rock that was crowned by the ancient
pines. He stood there erect, his head thrown back, his forehead to the
radiant heavens, his eyes fixed on the pale twinklings of the seven
stars in the northernmost constellation of the Bear--rapt, caught away
in spirit by the intensity of feeling engendered by the hour, the place.
Then he knelt, bowing his head on a lichened rock, and unto his Maker,
and the Maker of that humanity he had elected to serve, he consecrated
himself anew.
Ten minutes afterwards, he was coming down The Gore on his way back to
The Greenbush. He heard the agitated ringing of a bell-wether; then the
soft huddling rush of a flock of sheep somewhere in the distance. A
sheep dog barked sharply; a hound bayed in answer till the hills north
of The Gore gave back a multiple echo; but the Rothel kept its secrets,
and with inarticulate murmuring made haste to deposit them in the quiet
lake waters.