His
head was lifted, he was gazing northwards, far further than his
eyes could see, to shining spaces in great woods; and there his
threatened being walked in youth, with steps such as spirits take,
over immortal flowers, which were dim and faint but unfading
because they lived on in memory. In memory he walked with some who
were now far from his footsteps. And, seen through the gloaming of
that perilous day, how bright did those far days appear! Did they
not seem sunnier than they really were? No, reader; for all the
radiance that glittered so late in his mind was drawn from those
very days; it was their own brightness that was shining now: we
are not done with the days that were as soon as their sunsets have
faded, but a light remains from them and grows fairer and fairer,
like an afterglow lingering among tremendous peaks above
immeasurable slopes of snow.
The prisoner had scarcely noticed Rodriguez or his servant, any
more than he noticed his captors; for there come an intensity to
those who walk near death that makes them a little alien from
other men, life flaring up in them at the last into so grand a
flame that the lives of the others seem a little cold and dim
where they dwell remote from that sunset that we call mortality.
So he looked silently at the days that were as they came dancing
back again to him from where they had long lain lost in chasms of
time, to which they had slipped over dark edges of years.
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