THE PLACE BEYOND THE WINDS
BY HARRIET T. COMSTOCK
Illustrated by
HARRY SPAFFORD POTTER
GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1914
[Illustration: "It was a beautiful thing, that dance, grotesque, pagan and yet divine"]
FOREWORD
The In-Place cannot be found; you must happen upon it! Hidden behind itsrugged red rocks and hemlock-covered hills, it lies waiting for somethingto happen. It has its Trading Station, to and from which the CanadianIndians paddle their canoes—sometimes a dugout—bearing rare, lusciousblue berries invitingly packed in small baskets with their own greenleaves. And to the Station, also, go the hardy natives—good English,Scotch, or "Mixed"—with their splendid loads of fish.
"White fish go: pickerel come"—but always there is fish through summerdays and winter's ice.
There is a lovely village Green, around which the modest homes clustersociably. Poor, plain places they may be, but never dirty nor untidy. Andthe children and dogs! Such lovely babies; such human animals. They playand work together quite naturally and are the truest friends.
A little church, with a queer pointed spire and a beautiful altar,stands with open doors like a kindly welcome to all. Back of this, andapologetically placed behind its stockade fence, is the jail.
To have a jail and never need it! What more can be said of a community?But you are told—if you insist upon it—that the building is preservedas a warning, and if any one should by chance be forced to occupy it, "hewill have the best the place affords"—for justice is seasoned with mercyin the In-Place.
If you would know the aristocracy of the hamlet you must leave thefriendly Green and the pleasant water of the Channel, climb the redrocks, tread the grassy road between the hemlocks and the pines, and findthe farms. For, be it understood, by one's ability to wrench a livingfrom the soil instead of the water is he known and estimated. To fish isto gamble; to plant and reap is conservative business.
Dreamer's Rock and One Tree Island, Far Hill Place and Lonely Farm,safely sheltered they lie, and from them, in obedience to the "Lure ofthe States," comes now and again an adventurous soul to make his way, ifso he may; and never was there a braver, truer wanderer than Priscilla ofLonely Farm. Equipped with a great faith, a straight method of thinking,and an ideal that never faded from her sight, she, by the help of thePoor Property Man, found her place and her work awaiting her. Love, shefound, too—love that had to be tested by a man's sense of honour and awoman's determination, but it survived and found its fulfilment beforethe Shrine in the woods beyond Lonely Farm, where, as a little child,Priscilla had set up her Strange God and given homage to it.
Harriet T. Comstock.