, a hole between the guiding winds of the spirit ... one is
too occupied in not dropping when in those holes to think of anything
else. Action is the best thing, which is why I am now going to leave you
to sow the four-acre."

He got up, slowly and painfully, though he stood as erect as ever once
he was upon his feet. He stood a moment looking at Judith.

"Judy, d'you ever have those times when you feel something is going to
happen?" he asked, "when you expect something to come round the corner,
so to speak, at every moment. One so often had it in one's youth--one
woke with it every morning: I don't mean that, but the expectation of
some one thing that is in the air so near one that any moment it may
break into actuality?"

"I never have it now, my dear, but I know what you mean. Why? Have you
got it?"

"Yes."

"Is it about anything particular you are feeling it?"

"No, no; my uncanny vision doesn't go as far as that, I'm afraid."

"Dare I murmur indigestion?" she asked, with a gentle chuckle, hunching
herself into her shawls.

"You may murmur, but I scorn you as a materialist and one who isn't
even genuine. I go to my sowing, but you'll see if this old man is not
justified of his dreams." He left her, and she watched him across the
lawn with the detached affection of the old in her eyes; then she took
up, not her knitting or her writing-pad, but the little book of
devotions that lay in a fold of her shawl, and started to read, her lips
moving slightly but soundlessly.

In the four-acre field there was a strong wind blowing that for days had
been drying the turned earth to powder. The soil, so rich of hue when
freshly turned, now showed a pale drab, dry and crumbling beneath the
feet, while every step stirred up the fine particles and made them blow
about like smoke.

Ishmael superintended the pouring of a sack of dredge-corn into the
gaping maw of the drill, and the man took the rope reins, and, throwing
over the lever, set the horses off, following as faithfully as might be
the curve of the hedge. The sun gleamed on the glossy haunches of the
horses, on the upper curve of the spidery wheels, whose faded vermilion
seemed to revolve under a quivering splash of living gold that magically
stayed poised, as it were, to let the wheels slip perpetually from
under. The wind blew the horses' forelocks away between their ears;
while about their plumy fetlocks, wreathing around the wheels and the
sharp nozzles of th