" And then he added,
"Yes, I do have one regret, and a monstrous big one, too. I'd sure
like to have the winning of you all over again. I'd like to go sneaking
around the Piedmont hills looking for you. I'd like to meander into
those rooms of yours at Berkeley for the first time. And there's no
use talking, I'm plumb soaking with regret that I can't put my arms
around you again that time you leaned your head on my breast and cried
in the wind and rain."

CHAPTER XXVII

But there came the day, one year, in early April, when Dede sat in an
easy chair on the porch, sewing on certain small garments, while
Daylight read aloud to her. It was in the afternoon, and a bright sun
was shining down on a world of new green. Along the irrigation
channels of the vegetable garden streams of water were flowing, and now
and again Daylight broke off from his reading to run out and change the
flow of water. Also, he was teasingly interested in the certain small
garments on which Dede worked, while she was radiantly happy over them,
though at times, when his tender fun was too insistent, she was rosily
confused or affectionately resentful.

From where they sat they could look out over the world. Like the curve
of a skirting blade, the Valley of the Moon stretched before them,
dotted with farm-houses and varied by pasture-lands, hay-fields, and
vineyards. Beyond rose the wall of the valley, every crease and
wrinkle of which Dede and Daylight knew, and at one place, where the
sun struck squarely, the white dump of the abandoned mine burned like a
jewel. In the foreground, in the paddock by the barn, was Mab, full of
pretty anxieties for the early spring foal that staggered about her on
tottery legs. The air shimmered with heat, and altogether it was a
lazy, basking day. Quail whistled to their young from the thicketed
hillside behind the house. There was a gentle cooing of pigeons, and
from the green depths of the big canon arose the sobbing wood note of a
mourning dove. Once, there was a warning chorus from the foraging hens
and a wild rush for cover, as a hawk, high in the blue, cast its
drifting shadow along the ground.

It was this, perhaps, that aroused old hunting memories in Wolf. At any
rate, Dede and Daylight became aware of excitement in the paddock, and
saw harmlessly reenacted a grim old tragedy of the Younger World.
Curiously eager, velvet-footed and silent as a ghost, sliding and
gliding and crouching, the