The network of the trestle was
"Sure you would," she agreed contentedly. "Now run along and do Morani’s orchestra justice. He deserves it."
He patted her cheek and returned to his favourite stand in the front door.
The evening mysteries were deepening. Already the trunks of the trees on the far bank of the river were merging into a dull mass. The play of sunlight and shadow in the nearer forest was an etching of white and black. The mellow sudden Western night was dropping glamorous mantle over the familiar scene, softening the crudeness of the camp and exalting the dying round of the forest’s fight for solitude. The sand of the grade gleamed with evening tint of ochre. The network of the trestle was a maze of incised lines against the shaded bank opposite. A solitary bird, astir beyond its bedtime, hovered against the sky, cheeping to unseen brood below. Some swift-vanishing creature–wolf or coyote–ran along the edge of the distant bank for a fearful, curious glimpse of the persistent invasion of its venerable privacy. The sun, like a mocking challenge, was painting with flaming hand its tremendous but fleeting colour-picture on the northwest sky, where clouds unseen by day hung ever ready for the evening-hour brush of the great artist.
The dirty canvas of the camp was laundered by the mysteries of twilight. Living groups lay peacefully about the river bottom, , Torrance knew. For the moment the orchestra was resting. But snatches of hideous sound came wafting on the evening air as music; concertina, fiddle, mouth-organ, with here and there a cornet, a mandolin, a guitar, many breathing melody, merged into one vast harmony. Rasping voices lifted themselves in song. No laughter, no shouting–only the sounds of men whose memories are more sensitive than their feelings, who live in the past or the future, never in the present. Evening was fluttering gently down, mellowing line and tone.
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