ame house set nakedly on the flat prairie with a bit of
untidy garden round it--its living room in winter, with a huge fire, and
a woman moving about--the creek behind it, and himself taking horses down
to water. They were images of something that had once meant happiness and
hope--a temporary break or interlude in a dismal tale which had closed
upon it before and after.

Darkness came down. The man on the hill said to himself, "Now they are
having supper," and he crept down again to the farm, and crouching and
wriggling along he made his way again to the big window, over which the
curtains had been drawn. There was no one in the sitting-room, however,
to judge from the silence, but from the kitchen across the passage came a
rush of voices, together with a clatter of plates. The kitchen looked out
on the front of the farm, and a wooden shutter had been fastened across
the window. But the wood of the shutter was old and full of chinks, and
Delane, pressing his face to the window, was able to get just a glimpse
of the scene within--Rachel at the head of the table, the man in uniform
beside her--three other women. A paraffin lamp threw the shadow of the
persons at the table sharply on the white distempered wall. There were
flowers on the table, and the meal wore a home-like and tempting air to
the crouching spy outside. Rachel smiled incessantly, and it seemed to
Delane that the handsome man beside her could not take his eyes from her.
Nor could Delane. Her brown head and white throat, her soft, rose-tinted
face emerging from the black dress, were youth itself--a vision of youth
and lusty-hood brilliantly painted on the white wall.

Delane looked his fill. Then he dropped down the bank on which the farm
stood, and avoiding the open track through the fields, he skirted a hedge
which led down to the road, and was lost in the shadows of advancing
night.

VI

Rain!--how it pelted the September fields day after day and week after
week, as though to remind a world still steeped in, still drunk with the
most wonderful of harvests, that the gods had not yet forgotten their old
jealousy of men, and men's prosperity. Whenever a fine day came the early
ploughing and seeding was in full swing, and Rachel on one side of the
largest field could watch the drill at work, and on the other the harrow
which covered in the seed. In the next field, perhaps, she would find
Betty and Jenny lifting potatoes, and would go to help with t