impatient wings; under the moon all night the play of
ducks and drakes goes on along the margins of the ponds. Young people
are running away and marrying; middle-aged farmers surprise their wives
by looking in on them at their butter-making in the sweet dairies; and
Nature is lashing everything--grass, fruit, insects, cattle, human
creatures--more fiercely onward to the fulfillment of her ends. She is
the great heartless haymaker, wasting not a ray of sunshine on a clod,
but caring naught for the light that beats upon a throne, and holding
man and woman, with their longing for immortality, and their capacities
for joy and pain, as of no more account than a couple of fertilizing
nasturtiums.

The storm kept Daphne at home. On the next day the earth was yellow with
sunlight, but there were puddles along the path, and a branch rushing
swollen across the green valley in the fields. On the third, her mother
took the children to town to be fitted with hats and shoes, and Daphne
also, to be freshened up with various moderate adornments, in view of a
protracted meeting soon to begin. On the fourth, some ladies dropped in
to spend the day, bearing in mind the episode at the dinner, and having
grown curious to watch events accordingly. On the fifth, her father
carried out the idea of cutting down some cedar-trees in the front yard
for fence posts; and whenever he was working about the house, he kept
her near to wait on him in unnecessary ways. On the sixth, he rode away
with two hands and an empty wagon-bed for some work on the farm; her
mother drove off to another dinner--dinners never cease in Kentucky, and
the wife of an elder is not free to decline invitations; and at last she
was left alone in the front porch, her face turned with burning
eagerness toward the fields. In a little while she had slipped away.

All these days Hilary had been eager to see her. He was carrying a good
many girls in his mind that summer; none in his heart; but his plans
concerning these latter were for the time forgotten. He hung about that
part of his farm from which he could have descried her in the distance.
Each forenoon and afternoon, at the usual hour of her going to her
uncle's, he rode over and watched for her. Other people passed to and
fro,--children and servants,--but not Daphne; and repeated
disappointments fanned his desire to see her.

When she came into sight at last, he was soon walking beside her,
leading his horse by the reins.