The evening wind was blowing, and the sycamore above him cast its bronze leaves into the flood which sucked them under, or bore them with it on its way to the larger river and the ultimate sea.

This stream had no babbling voice; its note was low and grave.

Youth and mountain sources forgotten, it hearkened before the time to ocean voices.

The boy, idle upon the lichened stone, listened too, to distant utterances, to the sirens singing beyond the shadowy cape.

The earth soothed him; he lay with half shut eyes, and after the day's hot communion with old wrongs, he felt a sudden peace.
He was at the turn; the brute within him quiet behind the eternal bars; the savage receding, the man beckoning, the after man watching from afar.