The conductor was just stepping on board, for time and orders wait for nothing. The engineer had already climbed back to his cab; he saw a running woman kneel down on the platform and draw the boy up from the boards to rest in her arms. Having seen that much, the engineer turned away his head and wept out loud; and the train moved on, bearing pale faces that looked backward as long as they could discern anything. Mrs. Harbison had stumbled over Willie’s bent wheel first. When she found him indeed laid in the midst of the crowd, she did not believe it. He was not mangled. His bones were sound--she felt them with a fiercely quick hand. There was no mark about him excepting a dirty-looking spot on one temple. “Willie,” she cried, shaking him. “Willie! Willie!” “We’ll have to carry him home,” said her husband at her side, his voice sounding far off as if it came strained through some dense medium. She looked up, and could not understand it. “He’s knocked senseless,” she claimed. “Why doesn’t somebody bring water?” “He never knowed what hurt him,” cautiously said one villager to another. “The train was goin’ so fast, and he come up from among the houses onto it so fast, that it was done in a flash.” “And I don’t never want to see no better boy than Willie Harbison was,” responded the other. But only his mother--when she had him at home lying in that pomp of death with which we all shall impress beholders--could have pronounced the true oration over him. Through her dumb tragedy she wanted to make deaf-mute signs to some intelligence that here lay one of Nature’s poets, with a gift virgin and untarnished. He had never hunted a public. His public was the woods and sky, and his critic one fond woman. Not a line of unsatisfied ambition marked his placid face. He had lived an humble, happy life, and sung for the sake of expression, not for the sake of praise. He had, after all, only gone to find the best publisher, and his mother could always hear him “singing in the dark.” T’FÉRGORE A PASTORAL IN THREE PARTS TIME, 1883 PART I HE THREATENS TO ARRIVE “We will not endeavor to modify the motions of the elements, or fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform: each laboring for his own happiness by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.”--_Rasselas._ “Come into the painting-room,” said Julian, “and let’s talk it over.” “How excited you are!” I said. “Well, after balancing one way and another for years, my mind’s made up. We’re going.” “To Europe?” “Yes, to Europe.” “Oh, what a beautiful prospect,” I said. And then leaning against his elbow I heaved a great sigh. “It must be a beautiful prospect if you groan like that over it.” “The groan’s because I can’t go.”