Peter Neelands gave a shout of recognition! Mr. Driggs felt a strong
hand on his arm. George Steadman whispered hoarsely. "Come away,
Driggs. That girl frightens me. This is no place for us!"

CHAPTER XV

THE COMING OF SPRING

The Spring was late, cruelly late, so late indeed that if it had been
anything else but a season, it would have found itself in serious
trouble--with the door locked and a note pinned on the outside telling
it if it could not come in time it need not come at all. But the
Spring has to be taken in, whenever it comes--and be forgiven too, and
even if there were no note on the door, there were other intimations
of like effect, which no intelligent young Spring could fail to
understand. Dead cattle lay on the river bank, looking sightlessly up
to the sky. They had waited, and waited, and hung on to life just as
long as they could, but they had to give in at last.

Spring came at last, brimful of excitement and apologies. It was a
full-hearted, impulsive and repentant young Spring, and lavished all
its gifts with a prodigal hand; its breezes were as coaxing as June;
its head burned like the first of July; its sunshine was as rich and
mellow as the sunshine of August. Spring had acknowledged its debt
and the overdue interest, and hoped to prevent any unpleasantness by
paying all arrears and a lump sum in advance; and doing it all with
such a flourish of good fellowship that the memory of its past
delinquency would be entirely swept away!

The old Earth, frozen-hearted and bleached by wind and cold, and
saddened by many a blighted hope, lay still and unresponsive under the
coaxing breezes and the sunshine's many promises. The Earth knew what
it knew, and if it were likely to forget, the red and white cattle
on the hillside would remind it. The Earth knew that these same warm
breezes had coaxed it into life many times before, and it had burst
into bud and flowers and fruit, forgetting and forgiving the past with
its cold and darkness, and the earth remembered that the flowers had
withered and the fruit had fallen, and dark days had come when it had
no pleasure in them, and so although the sun was shining and the warm
winds blowing--the earth lay as unresponsive as the pulseless cattle
on its cold flat breast.

But the sun poured down its heat, and the warm breezes frolicked into
the out-of-the-way places, where old snowdrifts were hiding their
black faces, and gradually their hard heart