and hours since Norah went away. He sighed
wearily, got up, and walked back to his empty home.

Quite empty--that was the impression it made upon his mind both
to-night and all next day. He looked at it in the bright morning
sunshine, across the meadows, while the scythes laid down the first
long swathes of fragrant grass, and it seemed merely the shell of a
house. He looked at it in the midday glare, as he came up the field to
his dinner, and it seemed cold and black and cheerless. He looked at
it in the softer, kinder light of late afternoon, and it seemed to him
tragically sad--a monument of woe rather than a house, a fantastic
tomb built in the shape of a house in order to symbolize the homely
joy that had perished on this spot.

Yet smoke was rising from its chimneys, sound issuing from its
windows. All day long it had been full of active cheerful life. It and
the fields were happy in the animating harvest toil. Men with
harvesters' hats, women with sunbonnets, cracked their rustic jokes,
laughed, and sang at their labor; Mavis cooked food, filled the big
white bobs with beer, sent out bannocks and tin bottles of tea; Dale's
children had rakes and played at hay-making. Only the master, the
husband, the father, was unhappy.

No one knew it, of course. To other people he appeared to be just the
same as usual, naturally preoccupied with thoughts about the weather
as one always is at grass-cutting time, giving his orders firmly, and
seeing that they were obeyed promptly, smiling and nodding when you
showed yourself handy, frowning and looking rather black if you did
anything "okkard or feckless." Who could have guessed, as he looked at
his watch and then at the sky, that he was thinking: "It wants five
minutes of noon, and she is prob'ly out on what they term an
esplanade. There is a nice breeze down there, comin' to her over the
waater, blowin' her hair a bit loose, flappin' her skirts, sendin' out
her neck ribbon like a little flag behind her. It's all jolly, wi' the
mil'tary band, an' the smell o' the waves, an' crowds an' crowds o'
people--an' she won't have occasion to think o' me. P'raps they've bid
her wear her best--the white frock Mavis gave her, with the stockings
to match, and the new buckle-shoes--and likely young lads'll eye her
all over as they pass. Yes, she's seeing now the young uns--the mates
for her age--the proper article to make a photograph of a suitable
pair; and she'll soon stop thinking anyt