At the first streak of dawn I sought out the aged Slow Mover, whom I had often noted in his leafy temple, seated on a marble pediment his eyes fixed on the silent stream which bathed the very roots of the trees, whose wide-spreading branches helped to roof over his habitation.
All that day and the starry night which followed it, I sat at his feet.
Picture to yourself my utter despair at learning that not a word or a line, not a leaf or a parchment, was in existence, which, might end my fearful anxiety. I say fearful, for stronger and stronger, hour by hour, grew the impulse to put an end to this life of useless, senseless activity and join the throng of living statues into whose heart no vain regrets came to darken their placid dream-life.
On the morning of the second day a thought burst upon my mind. It was this:
Perchance there may dwell, somewhere on this isle, some one living creature, who, unlike his brothers, may possess the power of rapid speech, whose tongue, for some reason or other, may have stayed loosened.
I reasoned thus: In every land there were opposites, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, graceful and awkward, swift and slow. Surely on this isle must live such contrasts as these. True, it may be an exception; but it would be most wonderful if it did not exist.
All that day I spent in imparting unto the aged Slow Mover my train of thought.
It was deep in the twilight ere I had succeeded in putting the question to him: Whether there was not some living creature dwelling on this island whose powers of speech were more like mine, and to whom I might, in my ever increasing dread of transformation into a Slow Mover, flee for refuge from myself, for satisfaction of the irresistible longing pressing on my very soul.
But the shades of evening were not so deep that I could not note the darker shadow which began to gather on the face of the aged Slow Mover when I had completed my question.
I was startled.
So violent were the beatings of my heart that they sounded loud, though muffled, above the sighing of the zephyr, the rustle of the leaves, the plaintive warbling of the nightingale.
As this shadow went on growing, ever deeper and deeper, on the old man’s visage, I felt that I had touched some ancient wound, which, though long-forgotten, now bled afresh.
His lips parted, his head sank slowly, slowly, a sigh came forth, so full of meaning, so like a tale-bearer of some long hidden sorrow, that I feared for the worst.
My limbs stiffened.
I could feel the blood lessen its pace in my veins and go groping along as if uncertain of its way.
I pressed the tips of my fingers to my cheeks. They were cold as polished marble.
I essayed to speak. The words would not come.
At last I made a violent effort—
“Bulger!” I whispered.
Poor dog, he slept at my feet.
I struggled to escape the spell for one brief moment, that I might stoop to give my faithful friend a farewell caress.
Hist!
The Slow Mover spoke.
“Son!”
I was saved!
He had aught to say to me.
The spell was broken.
My heart began to beat again; the warm blood ran tingling through my veins.
It was a narrow escape.
Already my finger tips had cooled.
Another moment and I would have joined the throng of Slow Movers, and become a brother to the marble dwellers on the Sculptors’ Isle.
All that night the aged Slow Mover talked to me. And when the sun went up I knew all. I knew the secret which had so darkened his placid countenance. I knew the cave in which dwelt the hermit of the Sculptors’ Isle—an outcast, a prisoner, shut in between the narrow walls of a cavern by the sea, for no fault of his, for no sin, for no wrong.
Nature had so willed it.
Why, the aged Slow Mover knew not.
Antonius was the name which the hermit bore.
When morning came I sought him out.
I found him seated by his cavern’s portal, looking out upon the glory of the eastern sky.
This was the secret of his exile:
Some cruel fate had, in his youth, visited him with a dread disease, not unlike that which is known as St. Vitus’ dance. When the fit was upon him, not only did he lose all control over his limbs, so that his feet bore him whither he willed not to go, and that, too, with extreme rapidity, but his arms likewise executed the most rapid and vigorous gestures, now in apparent anger, now entreaty, now wonder. You will readily understand why ill-fated Antonius came to be banished from the midst of the Slow Movers.
Although their brother, and deeply beloved of them, his lightning-like rapidity of motion, his violent gestures, his almost ceaseless change of attitude, not only offended the Slow Movers, it dazed them; it shocked them; it checked the sluggish flow of life blood within their veins, and threatened them all with slow but certain death.
He must go!
He did!
Antonius was banished to the cavern by the sea, where never came sound, save the ocean’s roar when lashed by the demons of the gale, or its sad murmur and ceaseless break and splash in its moments of slumber and rest.
But, most terrible of all the manifestations of the unfortunate Antonius’ fearful ailment was the utterly wild and ungovernable rapidity of his speech.
Like maddened steeds, tongue and lips rushed along!
To the eyes and ears of the Slow Movers, such a violently expressive face, such mad rapidity of utterance, were death itself!
Not one brief month would have found a living statue in that home of flinty hearts, had Antonius not gone!
Antonius was thankful for that dread decree, which housed him forever in the cavern by the sea!
He saw the sufferings of his people, and though his eyes in that brief time wept more tears than all his brethren ever had shed in their sluggish lives, yet were they but a poor proof of the awful grief he felt.
Antonius turned towards me as I approached the spot where he sat wrapped in deep meditation. A sad, but withal kindly smile flitted about his lips, like the quick but faint glimmer of the lightning in the distant sky.
He rose.
I paused to await his bidding to approach him.
He spake not a word, but stretched out his hand.
I bounded forward to clasp it and press it to my lips.
At that instant the fit fell on him.
I could see the look of pain which flashed across his face.
Away he glided, now backward, now forward, now sidewise, now obliquely, his hand outstretched in a desperate effort to reach me, who, with equal desperation, advanced and retreated in a mad endeavor to grasp what constantly eluded me.
Bulger utterly unable to comprehend this wild dance among the rocks of that cavernous shore, followed my heels barking furiously.
I could take no time to quiet him.
Away, away, sped Antonius with redoubled speed, his right hand extended toward me as if with a pitiful prayer to grasp it and thus end the fit which was shaking his limbs so furiously.
Pausing to catch my breath, I again pursued the flitting figure with a determination to overtake it or perish in the attempt.
At last it seemed to circle in smaller and ever