When the two had topped the bank, and had approached me--taking cover
behind trees in a way which made me suspect Boy Scout training,
mingled with bandit literature--to a point where we could see each
other's features plainly, I moved over to one side of my bank, and
motioned them to approach.
"Come alongside, brothers," said I, pushing my fly-rod to one side;
"make fast and come aboard. And tell me, what cheer?"
They drew up to me, stern of mien, bold of bearing, dauntless of
purpose. At least, so I was convinced, each wished and imagined
himself to seem; and since they wished so to be seen thus, seized by
some sudden whim, I resolved to see them. How I envied them! Theirs
all the splendor of youth, of daring, of adventure, of romance;
things gone by from me, or for the most part, never known.
Frowning sternly, they seated themselves reluctantly on the grassy
bank beside me, and gazed out in the dignity of an imagined manhood
across my river, which now was lighted bravely by the retiring sun.
Had I not felt with them, longed with them, they could never so
splendidly have maintained their pretense. But between us, there in
the evening on my stream with only the birds and the sun to see, it
was not pretense. Upon the contrary, all cloaks were off, all masks
removed, and we were face to face in the strong light of reality. As
clearly as though I always had known them, I saw into the hearts of
these; and what I saw made my own heart ache and yearn for something
it had ever missed.
"What cheer, comrades?" I repeated at length. "Whither away, and upon
what errand?"
Now a strange thing happened, which I do not explain, for that I can
not. In plain fact, these two were obviously runaway boys, not the
first, nor perhaps the last of runaway boys; and I was a man of means,
a retired man, supposedly somewhat of a hermit, although really
nothing of the sort; lately a lawyer, hard-headed and disillusioned,
always a man of calm reason, as I prided myself; subject to no
fancies, a student and a lover of science, a mocker at all
superstition and all weak-mindedness. (Pardon me, that I must say all
these things of myself.) Yet, let me be believed who say it, some
spell, whether of this presence of Youth, whether of the evening and
the sun, or whether of the inner and struggling soul of Man, so fell
upon us all then and there, that we were not man and boys, but bold
adventurers, all three of like kidney! This was not a modern land that
lay about us. Yonder was not the copse beyond the birches, where my
woodcock sometimes found cover. This was not my trout-stream. Those
yonder were not my elms and larches moving in the evening air. No,
before us lay the picture of the rolling deep, its long green swells
breaking high in white spindrift. The keen wind of other days sounded
in our ears, and yonder pressed the galleons of Spain! Youth, Youth
and Adventure, were ours.