r a russet--mounted to a
delicacy. On the other side of the valley, a half mile off as a bird would
fly, were the buildings of a convent, and if you waited you might hear
the twilight bell. To this day all distant bells come to my ears with a
pleasing softness, as though they had been cast in a quieter world. Stone
arrow-heads were found in a near-by field as often as the farmer turned up
the soil in plowing. And because of this, a long finger of land that put
off to the valley, was called Indian Point. Here, with an arm for pillow,
one might lie for a long hour on a sunny morning and watch the shadows of
clouds move across the lowland. A rooster crows somewhere far off--surely
of all sounds the drowsiest. A horse in a field below lifts up its head and
neighs. The leaves practice a sleepy tune. If one has the fortune to keep
awake, here he may lie and think the thoughts that are born of sun and
wind.

And now, although it is not yet noon, hunger rages in us. The pancakes, the
syrup, the toast and the other incidents of breakfast have disappeared
the way the rabbit vanishes when the magician waves his hand. The horrid
Polyphemus did not so crave his food. And as yet there is no comforting
sniff from the kitchen. Scrubbing and other secular matters engage the
farmer's wife. There is as yet not a faintest gurgle in the kettle.

To divert ourselves, we climb three trees and fall out of one. Is twelve
o'clock never to come? Have Time and the Hour grown stagnant? We eat apples
and throw the cores at the pig to hear him grunt. Is the great round sun
stuck? Have the days of Joshua come again? We walk a rail fence. Is it not
yet noon? Shrewsbury clock itself--reputed by scholars the slowest of all
possible clocks--could not so hold off. I snag myself--but it is nothing
that shows when I sit.

Ah! At last! My grandfather is calling from the house. We run back and
find that the lunch is ready and is laid upon a table with a red oil-cloth
cover. We apply ourselves. Silence....

The journey home started about five o'clock. There was one game we always
played. Each of us, having wisely squinted at the sky, made a reckoning and
guessed where we would be when the sun set. My grandfather might say the
high bridge. I named the Sherman House. But my brother, being precise,
judged it to a fraction of a telegraph pole. Beyond a certain turn--did we
remember?--well, it would be exactly sixteen telegraph poles further on.
What an excitemen