When her emotions had expended their force and she arose, an experience befell her which revealed the immaturity of her mind.
The idea of that “inner light” had taken complete possession of her soul, and so when she suddenly perceived a long bright path of gold which a beam of the setting sun had thrown along the floor of the forest, like a shining track in the direction of the village, she thought it had emerged from the depths of her own spirit.
Without a moment’s hesitation she entered this golden highway and sped along! Not for another instant did she regret the failure of the gypsy god to meet her. She knew well enough, now, the way to find her path amid the mysteries of life! She had but to follow this light!
The shining pathway led her to the summit of the hill; and as she began to descend the other slope, it vanished with the sun. But she was not troubled, for she saw at a glance that the brook to whose banks she was coming was the one flowing through the farm of the Quaker. “Perhaps I shall see him again,” she said to herself, and the hope made her tumultuously happy.
She had lost all consciousness of the flight of time, and now noticed with surprise that it was evening. The crows were winging their way to their nesting ground; the rabbits were seeking their burrows; the whole animal world was faring homeward. Some universal impulse seemed to be driving them along their predestined paths, as it drove the brooks and the clouds, and Pepeeta appeared, as much as they, to be borne onward by a power above herself. She was but little more conscious of choosing her path than the doe who at a little distance was hurrying home to her mate; so completely were all her volitional powers in abeyance to the emotional elements of her soul.
WHERE PATHS CONVERGE
“If we do meet again, we’ll
If not, ’tis true this parting was well made.”
Violent emotions, like the lunar tides, must have their ebb because they have their flow. The feelings do not so much advance like a river, as oscillate like a pendulum.
Striding homeward after his downfall in the log cabin, David’s determination to join his fortunes to those of the two adventurers began to wane. He trembled at an unknown future and hesitated before untried paths.
Already the strange experience through which he had just passed began to seem to him like a half-forgotten dream. The refluent thoughts and feelings of his religious life began to set back into every bay and estuary of his soul.
With a sense of shame, he regretted his hasty decision, and was saying to himself, “I will arise and go to my Father,” for all the experiences of life clothed themselves at once in the familiar language of the Scriptures.
It is more than likely that he would have carried out this resolution, and that this whole experience would have become a mere incident in his life history, if his destiny had depended upon his personal volition. But how few of the great events of life are brought about by our choice alone!