By chance, and shore his finger to the skin. Straightway a silence fell upon the room. Men bandied meaning glances; they made mouths; They stoned the boy with looks of silent scorn. He felt the hail-storm, but he saw it not. Then up the Captain stood, the grey old man; He spat, and pointed forth, and thundered “Go!” And the lad went. On both sides men fell back, Till through their midst he had to run the gauntlet. He reached the door; from there he took to flight;— Up, up he went,—through wood and over hillside, Up through the stone-screes, rough, precipitous. He had his home up there among the mountains.— It was some six months later he came here, With mother, and betrothed, and little child. He leased some ground upon the high hill-side, There where the waste lands trend away towards Lomb. He married the first moment that he could; He built a house; he broke the stubborn soil; He throve, as many a cultivated patch Bore witness, bravely clad in waving gold. At church he kept his right hand in his pocket,— But sure I am at home his fingers nine Toiled every whit as hard as others’ ten.— One spring the torrent washed it all away. Their lives were spared. Ruined and stripped of all, He set to work to make another clearing; And, ere the autumn, smoke again arose From a new, better-sheltered, mountain farm-house. Sheltered? From torrent—not from avalanche; Two years, and all beneath the snow lay buried. But still the avalanche could not daunt his spirit. He dug, and raked, and carted—cleared the ground— And the next winter, ere the snow-blasts came, A third time was his little homestead reared. Three sons he had, three bright and stirring boys; They must to school, and school was far away;— And they must clamber, where the hill-track failed, By narrow ledges past the headlong scree. What did he do? The eldest had to manage As best he might, and, where the path was worst, His father bound a rope round him to stay him;— The others on his back and arms he bore. Thus he toiled, year by year, till they were men. Now might he well have looked for some return. In the New World, three prosperous gentlemen Their school-going and their father have forgotten. He was short-sighted. Out beyond the circle Of those most near to him he nothing saw. To him seemed meaningless as cymbals’ tinkling Those words that to the heart should ring like steel. His race, his fatherland, all things high and shining, Stood ever, to his vision, veiled in mist. But he was humble, humble, was this man; And since that sessions-day his doom oppressed him, As surely as his cheeks were flushed with shame, And his four fingers hidden in his pocket.— Offender ’gainst his country’s laws? Ay, true!