Harvey’s strong voice failed, sank to a whisper. He stood, leaning on the gate, motionless. The old man on the grass outside was as motionless as he. At last, he said, softly, “D’you see anything queer about my garden, friend?”
“All the flowers in it are w’ite flowers.”
“That’s right. All the flowers are white. But wait.
“This feller, he went off down the trail, home. It was late, and it looked like a bad night. He’d gone maybe a half-mile, when someone overhauled him; he saw it was the old pedlar he’d been talkin’ to. The old man, he stops the down-and-outer and puts a little packet in his hand.
“What’s this?’ said the feller. And the pedlar said, ‘To make a garden for the children,’ he said, just like that, and turned away and was gone before the feller could say ‘Thank you.’
“He’s been waitin’,” said Harvey, gently, “to say ‘Thank you,’ ever since.”
Evening was closing to a perfect night. White flowers fell from the locust-trees along the grass, and moths as white and silent haunted the garden of white flowers. A woman came from the house and stood on the white steps as if she were watching something in the garden shadows, and a white cat rubbed against her dress. Harvey’s voice, when it came, was hushed; yet it seemed to break a silence as perfect as a pearl:
“When the feller I’ve been tellin’ you about looked at the little packet, he saw there was writing on it. It said—Harvey spoke as if reading from memory—it said, ‘_White Columbine. Hardy perennial. Sow in autumn in carefully prepared soil._’ D’you see anything queer about the flowers in my garden, friend?”
Again the answer came, slowly, from the other side of the fence:
The old man stretched a hand through the bars and lightly touched one blossom of a thousand white columbines.
“That’s right. And when the feller had read the writing he gave a kind thought to the pedlar, and put the packet of seeds in his pocket, and forgot it.
“He’d enough to make him forget more things than a packet of flower-seeds an old pedlar had given him. _If_ you knew those hills, you’d know that there was storms on ’em that leap on a man like wolves. He was caught in one, and all night he was lost on the mountains.
“Level rain that drove in his face like a wall: wind that bruised the livin’ flesh on his bones: sleet to glass the rocks, and a moon no more than a blot in the scud—he knew no more of the night. He kep’ going some way, thinkin’ of the woman that waited for him. If he hadn’t fixed his mind on her he’d have just given up and laid down and died, for the weather used him cruel, and he’d no heart to fight it, only because of her. Then he found he’d missed the trail, and he didn’t greatly care—only for her.