This page needs to be proofread.
A name was called, and forth another stepped,
- one pale as snow upon the glacier's edge.
- They bade the youth advance; he reached the table;
- we saw his right hand swaddled in a clout;-
- he gasped, he swallowed, battling after words,-
- but, though the Captain urged him, found no voice.
- Ah yes, at last! Then with his cheek aflame,
- his tongue now failing him, now stammering fast,
- he mumbled something of a scythe that slipped
- 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-slips, 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 hillside,
- 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