Now it was
August, and the light golden upon the grass and the pilgrim cedar.
Alexander walked slowly, with a great stick under his hand. Old Bran
was dead, but a young Bran stretched himself, wagged his tail, and
looked beseechingly at the master.
"I'll let you out," said the latter, "but I am a prisoner; I cannot
let myself out!"
He moved haltingly to the door, opened it, and the dog ran forth.
Glenfernie returned to the window. "Prisoner." The word brought to his
strongly visualizing mind prisoners and prisons through all Britain
this summer--shackled prisoners, dark prisons, scaffolds.... He leaned
his head against the window-frame.
"O God that my father and my grandfather served--God of old times--of
Israel in Egypt! I think that I would release them all if I
could--_all but one! Not him!_" He looked at the cedar. "Who was he,
in truth, who planted that, perhaps for a remembrance? And he, and
all men, had and have some one deep wrong that shall not be brooked!"
He stood in a brown study until there was a tap at the door. "Come
in!"
Alice entered, bearing before her a bowl of flowers of all fair hues
and shapes. She herself was like a bright, strong, winsome flower. "To
make your room look bonny!" she said, and placed the bowl upon the
table. To do so she pushed aside the books. "What a withered,
snuff-brown lot! Won't you be glad when you are back in the keep with
all the books?"
Glenfernie, wrapped in a brown gown, came with his stick back to the
great chair before the books.
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