riven by a farm hand, went
between. Its iron-toothed rack caught the new-mown hay, tossed it and
scattered it on the field. Beside the long glistening swaths the cut
edge of the hay stood up clean and solid as a wall. Above it the raised
plane of the grass-tops, brushed by the wind, quivered and swayed,
whitish green, greenish white, in a long shimmering undulation.

Eliot went on to meet Anne and Colin as they turned and came up the
field again.

When they saw him they jumped down and came running.

"Eliot, you never told us."

"I wired at nine this morning."

"There's nobody in the house and we've not been in since breakfast at
seven," Colin said.

"It's twelve now. Time you knocked off for lunch, isn't it?"

"Are you all right, Eliot?" said Anne.

"Rather."

He gave a long look at them, at their sun-burnt faces, at their clean,
slender grace, Colin in his cricketing flannels, and Anne in her
land-girl's white-linen coat, knickerbockers, and grey wideawake.

"Colin doesn't look as if there was much the matter with him. He might
have been farming all his life."

"So I have," said Colin; "considering that I haven't lived till now."

And they went back together towards the house.

ii

Colin's and Anne's work was done for the day. The hay in the Broad
Pasture was mown and dried. Tomorrow it would be heaped into cocks and
carried to the stackyard.

It was the evening of Eliot's first day. He and Anne sat out under the
apple trees in the orchard.

"What on earth have you done to Colin?" he said. "I expected to find him
a perfect wreck."

"He was pretty bad three months ago. But it's good for him being down
here in the place he used to be happy in. He knows he's safe here. It's
good for him doing jobs about the farm, too."

"I imagine it's good for him being with you."

"Oh, well, he knows he's safe with me."

"Very safe. He owes it to you that he's sane now. You must have been
astonishingly wise with him."

"It didn't take much wisdom. Not more than it used to take when he was a
little frightened kid. That's all he was when he came back from the war,
Eliot."

"The point is that you haven't treated him like a kid. You've made a man
of him again. You've given him a man's life and a man's work."

"That's what I want to do. When he's trained he can look after Jerrold's
land. You know poor Barker died last month of septic pneumonia. The camp
was full of it."

"I know."

"What do you think of