The
birds still lingering among the cold, bare branches were already awake,
and calling cheerily to one another, as if the higher world in which
they lived was all untouched by the struggle and strife of this lower
human world. The heavy-hearted men in the great room of Cedar House
listened with the vague wistfulness that the happiness of bird voices
always brings to the troubled. They also heard the low trumpeting of the
swans as the breath of the morning swayed the rushes and that, too,
filled them with a deeper longing for peace. But suddenly the far-off
echo of a horse's rapid approach made them forget everything else. The
doctor was coming at last! As one man, the three men sprang to open the
door, and leapt out into the pallid daylight. The horseman was now near
by and in another moment they saw that the rider was not the doctor, nor
yet the attorney-general, but Philip Alston.
The priest shrank back with an uncontrollable recoil and then stood
still and silent, watching every movement of the tall figure which had
reined up and was dismounting with the ease of a boy.
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