The night
was clear and the sky brilliant with stars. In the open, away from the
multitude of houses, he no longer felt awkward and afraid, and went
cheerfully along. After a time he stopped and stood facing the river.
Standing on a high cliff and with a grove of trees at his back, the stars
seemed to have all gathered in the eastern sky. Below him the water of the
river reflected the stars. They seemed to be making a pathway for him into
the East.
The tall Missouri countryman sat down on a log near the edge of the cliff
and tried to see the water in the river below. Nothing was visible but a
bed of stars that danced and twinkled in the darkness. He had made his way
to a place far above the railroad bridge, but presently a through passenger
train from the West passed over it and the lights of the train looked also
like stars, stars that moved and beckoned and that seemed to fly like
flocks of birds out of the West into the East.
For several hours Hugh sat on the log in the darkness. He decided that it
was hopeless for him to find his way back to the hotel, and was glad of the
excuse for staying abroad. His body for the first time in his life felt
light and strong and his mind was feverishly awake. A buggy in which sat a
young man and woman went along the road at his back, and after the voices
had died away silence came, broken only at long intervals during the hours
when he sat thinking of his future by the barking of a dog in some distant
house or the churning of the paddle-wheels of a passing river boat.
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