om
the height. The ice was gone, the snow was gone, no one knew whither;
the Straits were dotted with white sails. Bluebells appeared, swinging
on their hair-like stems where late the icicles hung, and every little
Indian farm set to work with vigor, knowing that the time was short. The
soldiers from the fort dug in the military garden under the cliff,
turning up the mould in long ridges, and pausing to hang up their coats
on the old stockade with a finely important air of heat: it was so long
since they had been too warm! The little village was broad awake now;
there was shipping at the piers again, and a demand for white-fish; all
the fishing-boats were out, and their half-breed crews hard at work. The
violins hung unused on the walls of the little cabins that faced the
west, for the winter was ended, and the husbands and lovers were off on
the water: the summer was their time for toil.

And now came the parting. Rast was to leave the island, and enter the
Western college which Dr. Gaston had selected for him. The chaplain
would have sent the boy over to England at once to his own _alma mater_
had it been possible; but it was not possible, and the good man knew
little or nothing of the degree of excellence possessed by American
colleges, East or West. Harvard and Yale and old Columbia would not have
believed this; yet it was true.

Rast was in high spirits; the brilliant world seemed opening before him.
Everything in his life was as he wished it to be; and he was not
disturbed by any realization that this was a rare condition of affairs
which might never occur again. He was young, buoyant, and beautiful;
everybody liked him, and he liked everybody. He was going to set sail
into his far bright future, and he would find, probably, an island of
silver and diamonds, with peacocks walking slowly about spreading their
gorgeous feathers, and pleasure-boats at hand with silken sails and
golden oars. It was not identically this that he dreamed, but things
equally shining and unattainable--that is, to such a nature as his. The
silver and diamond islands are there, but by a law of equalization only
hard-featured prosaic men attain them and take possession, forming
thereafterward a lasting contrast to their own surroundings, which then
goes into the other scale, and amuses forever the poverty-stricken poets
who, in their poor old boats, with ragged canvas and some small ballast
of guitars and lutes, sail by, eating their crusts