from wounded shrubbery and grass, and his outspread hands tore
unheeded plants. His wrists hurt him and he rested from time to time,
always caring for his hat and knotted yellow cane, blowing through his
moustache.

Dew had been falling covering the twilight leaves like myriad faces,
damp with the perspiration of the struggle for existence, and half a
mile away, standing out against the darkness of the night, a grove of
white birches shimmered, like teeth in a skull.

He heard the creaking of a gate, and the splashing of late rain into the
depths of a dark cistern. His heart ached with the nearness of the
earth, the faint murmur of it moving upon itself, like a sleeper who
turns to throw an arm about a beloved.

A frog began moaning among the skunk cabbages, and John thrust his hand
deep into his bosom.

Something somnolent seemed to be here, and he wondered. It was like a
deep, heavy, yet soft prison where, without sin, one may suffer
intolerable punishment.

Presently he went on, feeling his way. He reached a high plank fence
and sensing it with his fingers, he lay down, resting his head against
the ground.

He was tired, he wanted to sleep, but he searched for his hat and cane
and straightened out his coat beneath him before he turned his eyes to
the stars.

And now he could not sleep, and wondered why he had thought of it;
something quick was moving the earth, it seemed to live, to shake with
sudden immensity.

He heard a dog barking, and the dim light from a farm window kept
winking as the trees swung against its square of light. The odor of
daisies came to him, and the assuring, powerful smell of the stables; he
opened his mouth and drew in his moustache.

A faint tumult had begun. A tremor ran under the length of his body and
trembled off into the earth like a shudder of joy,--died down and
repeated itself. And presently he began to tremble, answering, throwing
out his hands, curling them up weakly, as if the earth were withholding
something precious, necessary.

His hat fell off, striking a log with a dull hollow sound, and he
pressed his red moustache against the grass weeping.

Again he heard it, felt it; a hundred hoofs beat upon the earth and he
knew the horses had gone wild in the corral on the other side of the
fence, for animals greet the summer, striking the earth, as friends
strike the back of friends. He knew, he understood; a hail to summer, to
life, to death.

He drew himself agains