The Singing Mouse Stories

Back again, now, by some impulse of the dog which hasn’t had any day. It is winter now, I remember, Singing Mouse, and I am walking by the shore of the great Inland Seas. There is snow on the ground. The trees look black in contrast as you gaze up from the beach against the high bank. It is cold. It is dark. There is a shiver in the air. There are icicles in the sky. Something is flying through the trees, but silent as if it came out of a grave. I have been walking, I know. I have walked a million miles, and I’m tired. My legs are stiff, and my legging has frozen fast to my overshoe; I remember that. And so I sit down—right here, you know—and look out over the lake—just over there, you see. The ice reaches out from the shore into the lake a long way; and it is covered with snow, and looks white. I can follow that white glimmer in a long, long curve to the right—twenty miles or more, maybe. Yes, it is cold. But ah! what is that out there, and what is it doing? It is setting all the long white curves of ice afire. It is throwing down hammered silver in a broad path, out there on the water. Those are not ripples. That is silver! There will be angels walking on that pathway before long! That is not the moon coming up over the lake! It is the swinging open, by some careless angel’s mischance, of the door of the White City of Rest!... How old, how sore a man climbed up the steep bank! There were white fields. In the distance a dog barked. Away across the fields a bright and cheery light shone out from a window, and as the moon rose higher, it showed the house which held the light. It was not a large house, but it seemed to be a home. Home!—what is that? I wondered; and I remember that I pulled at the frozen legging, and moved, with pain, the limbs grown tired and sore.