He had a vague glimmer that perhaps his
simile was too material, and that this very body was the clay in which
the springing, germinating soul was planted to bloom out in heaven, but
dared not pursue it unadvised, for fear of the quicksands into which it
might betray him. He merely tied a knot in the thread of his discourse
by answering,--
"Jus' so. The bean planted, the bean comes up. You planted, and what
follows?"
"I come up," said Flor, consentingly, and quite as if he had got the
better of the discussion.
Then he rose, and Flor led the way back to Miss Emma,--having first,
upon Sarp's serious hesitation, pledged herself for Miss Emma's secrecy
and gratitude with tears and asseverations.
In spite of the fact that he had never meant nor cared to see it again,
there was something pleasant to Sarp in the face of the sleeper upturned
in a moonbeam. He stooped and lifted her tenderly, and laid her head on
his shoulder. The young girl opened her eyes vacantly, but heard Flor's
voice beside her still,--
"Doan' ye be scaret now, honey! Bress you, 's a true frien': he'll get
us shet ob dis yere swamp mighty sudd'n!"
And soothed by the dreamy motion, entirely fatigued, borne swiftly along
in strong arms, under the low, waving boughs in the dim forest darkness,
she was drowsed again with slumber, from which she woke only on being
placed in the bottom of a skiff to turn over into a deeper dream than
before.
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