The dead
bird passed slowly before us, and the unruffled sheet of water rolled
and engulfed it in the deep darkness below the bridge. When the bird
had disappeared, we saw another swallow pass and repass a hundred times
beneath the bridge, uttering its little sharp cry of distress, and
dashing against the wooden beams of the arch. Involuntarily we looked
at each other; I cannot tell what our eyes expressed as they met, but
the despair of the poor bird found us with our eyelids so overcharged,
and our hearts so nearly bursting, that we both turned away at the same
moment, and throwing ourselves with our faces to the ground, sobbed
aloud. One tear called forth another tear, one thought another thought,
one foreboding another foreboding, each sob another sob. We often
strove to speak, but the broken voice of the one only made that of the
other still more inaudible, and we ended by yielding to nature, and
pouring forth in silence, during hours marked by the shadows alone, all
the tears that rose from their hidden springs.
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