Project Gutenberg's The Indian On The Trail, by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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Title: The Indian On The Trail
From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

Author: Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Release Date: October 30, 2007 [EBook #23252]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by David Widger

THE INDIAN ON THE TRAIL

From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood

Maurice Barrett sat waiting in the old lime-kiln built by the British in
the war of 1812--a white ruin like much-scattered marble, which stands
bowered in trees on a high part of the island. He had, to the amusement
of the commissioner, hired this place for a summer study, and paid a
carpenter to put a temporary roof over it, with skylight, and to make a
door which could be fastened. Here on the uneven floor of stone were set
his desk, his chair, and a bench on which he could stretch himself to
think when undertaking to make up arrears in literary work. But the days
were becoming nothing but trysts with her for whom he waited.

First came the heavenly morning walk and the opening of his study, then
the short half-hour of labor, which ravelled off to delicious suspense.
He caught through trees the hint of a shirt-waist which might be any
girl's, then the long exquisite outline which could be nobody's in the
world but hers, her face under its sailor hat, the blown blond hair, the
blue eyes. Then her little hands met his outstretched hands at the door,
and her whole violet-breathing self yielded to his arms.

They sat down on the bench, still in awe of each other and of the swift
miracle of their love and engagement. Maurice had passed his fiftieth
year, so clean from dissipation, so full of vitality and the beauty of a
long race of strong men, that he did not look forty, and in all out-door
activities rivalled the boys in their early twenties. He was an expert
mountain-climber and explorer of regions from which he brought his
own literary material; inured to fatigue, patient in hardship, and
resourceful in danger. Money and reputation and the power which attends
them he had wru