her, past generations spoke in his every word
and action, he became sedate, deferential, leisurely. It was not fear of
the elder man that caused this change, it was reflection from him.

The shadows were long in the garden, and away across the pastures,
glimpsed beyond the cypress hedge and bordering the cotton fields, the
pond-shadows cast by the live oaks at noon had become river shadows,
flowing eastward; the murmur of bees filled the air like a haze of sound,
and here and there as they passed a bush coloured flowers detached
themselves and became butterflies.

They sat down on a great old stone bench lichened and sun warmed to enjoy
the view, and the Colonel talked of tobacco and politics and cotton,
including them all in his conversation in the grand patriarchal manner.

Phyl understanding little, and half drowsed by the warmth and the buzzing
of the bees and the voice of the speaker, had given herself up to that
lazy condition of mind which is the next best thing to sleep, when she was
suddenly aroused. She was seated between Miss Pinckney and Silas. Silas
had pinched her little finger.

She snatched her hand away, and turned towards him. He was looking away
over the pastures; his profile showed nothing but its absolute
correctness. Miss Pinckney had noticed nothing, and the Colonel, who had
finished with cotton, looking at his watch, declared that it was close on
dinner time.

After supper that night, Phyl found herself in the garden. Silas had not
appeared at supper; the Colonel had brought down a book of old
photographs, photographs of people and places dead or changed, and he and
Miss Pinckney became so absorbed in them that they had little thought for
the girl.

She went out to look at the moon, and it was worth looking at, rising like
a honey coloured shield above the belt of the eastern woods.

The whole world was filled with the moonlight, warm tinted, and ghostly as
the light of vanished days, white moths were flitting above the bushes,
and on the almost windless air the voice of an owl came across the cotton
fields.

Phyl reached the seat where they had all sat that afternoon. It was still
warm from the all-day sunshine, and she sat down to rest and listen.

The owl had ceased crying, and through the league wide silence faint
sounds far and near told of the life moving and thrilling beneath the
night; the boom of a beetle, voices from the distant road, and now and
then a whisper of wind rising