Chapter 7 - Page 2

suffering and danger.

Phyllis expected John, and the Bishop went into the city to meet him.
O, how happy she was! She went from room to room re-arranging the lace
curtains, and placing every chair and couch in its prettiest position.
The table on such holidays is a kind of altar, and she spread it with
the snowiest damask, the clearest crystal, and the brightest silver.
She made it beautiful with fresh cool ferns and budding roses. Outside
Nature had done her part. The orange-trees filled the air with subtle
fragrance, and the warm south wind wafted it in waves of perfume
through the open doors and windows. Every vine was in its first beauty,
every tree and shrub had as yet its spring grace, that luminous emerald
transparency which seems to make the very atmosphere green. The garden
was wearing all its lilies and pansies and sweet violets, and the birds
were building, and shedding song upon every tree-top.

To meet her lover, when that lover comes back from the battle-field
with the light of victory on his brow, what women will not put on all
her beautiful garments? Phyllis's dark eyes held a wonderfully tender
light, and the soft, rich pallor of her complexion took just the shadow
of color from the dress of pale pink which fell in flowing lines to
her small sandaled feet. A few white narcissus were at her belt and
in her black hair, and a fairer picture of pure and graceful womanhood
never gladdened a lover's heart.

John had taken in and taken on, even in the few weeks of his absence,
some of that peculiar air of independence which seems to be the spirit
infusing every thing in Texan land. "I can't help it," he said, with
a laugh; "it's in the air; the very winds are full of freedom; they
know nothing will challenge them, and they go roving over the prairies
with a sound like a song."

The Bishop had come back with John, but the Bishop was one of those
old men who, while they gather the wisdom of age, can still keep their
young heart. After supper was over he said: "Phyllis, my daughter,
let them put me a chair and a table under the live oaks by the cabins.
I am going to have a class-meeting there to-night. That will give me
the pleasure of making many hearts glad; and it will give John a couple
of hours to tell you all the wonderful things he is going to do."

And there, two hours afterward, John and Phyllis went to find him.
He was sitting under a great tree, with the servants in little ebony
squads around him at the doors of their white cabins; and singularly
white they looked, under the swaying festoons of gray moss and in the
soft light; for the moon was far up in the zenith, calm and bright
and worshipful. John and Phyllis stood together, listening to his