roken
scythe lay to one side amid the straggling ailanthus shoots; near the
wood-pile there was a wheelbarrow half filled with chips, and at a
little distance the axe was poised upon a rotten log. From the small
coops beside the hen-house came an anxious clucking as the fluffy yellow
chickens strayed beneath the uneven edges of their pointed prisons and
made independent excursions into the world.

In the far east the day was slowly breaking, and the open country was
flooded with pale, washed-out grays, like the background of an
impressionist painting. A heavy dew had risen in the night, and as the
boy passed through the dripping weeds on his way to the stable they left
a chill moisture upon his bare feet. His eyes were heavy with sleep,
and to his cloudy gaze the familiar objects of the barnyard assumed
grotesque and distorted shapes. The manure heap near the doorway
presented an effect of unreality, the pig-pen seemed to have suffered
witchery since the evening before, and the haystack, looming vaguely in
the drab distance, appeared to be woven of some phantasmal fabric.

He led out the old sorrel mare and followed her into the large ploughed
field beyond the cow-pen, where the harrow was lying on one side of the
brown ridges. As he passed the pen the startled sheep huddled into a far
corner, bleating plaintively, and the brindle cow looked after him with
soft, persuasive eyes. When he had attached the clanking chains of the
plough harness to the single-tree, he caught up the ropes which served
for reins and set out laboriously over the crumbling earth, which
yielded beneath his feet and made walking difficult.

The field extended from the cow-pen and the bright, green rows of
vegetables that were raised for market to the reedy brook which divided
his father's land from that belonging to General Battle. The brook was
always cool and shady, and silvery with minnows darting over the shining
pebbles beneath the clear water. As Nicholas looked across the neutral
furrows he could see the feathery branches of willows rising from the
gray mist, and, farther still up the sloping hillside, the dew-drenched
green of the mixed woodlands.

The land before him had been upturned by shallow ploughing some days
since, and it lay now pale and arid, the large clods of earth showing
the detached roots of grass and herbs, and presenting a hint of
menacing destruction rather than the prospect of the peaceful art of
cultivation. It was