ls crowned with a wreath o' corn and o' poppies,
that shined in the sunlight like to gold strewn all with rubies. She
wore a new kirtle of white wool, and her brown throat rose from her
white kerchief like as a frozen wood-dove's dusky breast doth peep from
new-fallen snow.

And Mistress Ruth walked beside her as one o' her maids o' honor. And
they twain did remind me of naught so much as of a lamb trotting by the
side of a forest doe--the one so meek and white, and the other so free
and brown, with great eyes ever moving, and head aloft.

There, moreover, walked Master Hacket. He was as brown as my Keren, and
nearly half as tall again; and he had eyes like pools o' water under a
night heaven, wherein two stars have drowned themselves, as 'twere, and
brows as black and straight as a sweep o' cloud across an evening sky.
Ruth walked at his side, all glittering with her unbound hair, like to a
sunbeam that follows a dark stream. And I saw that they talked together,
and nodded as though agreeing on something, and looked together at my
lass where she sat on her flower-throne with her poppy-crown, and her
lips like poppies. And all at once she turned and saw them, and her lips
parted over her white teeth in a sudden smile, as when a kirtle o' red
silk doth tear over a white petticoat beneath; and she turned away; but
I could see that she laughed in her brown throat, as a bird sings
sometimes for its own hearkening ere trolling for the whole forest. So I
said to myself, "'Ware, 'ware, my little spring lamb; there is trouble
ahead for thee. Thou wilt not win thy Boaz so easily as thou dost think,
my little Ruth."

Now, when they were come to the fields, and the maids seated under some
elm-trees, and all the lads fallen to 't with their sickles, while that
they were reaping the glistening corn my Keren doth leap to her feet,
and she calls out,

"I know not the name o' yonder man, but I do know that I can give him a
lesson in reaping!"

So forthwith up jumps she, and, striding out into the sunlit meadow,
jerks young Hacket's sickle from his hand, and, having turned back the
sleeves o' her smock, stands well upon her shapely legs and begins to
reap.

Now, methought I had ne'er in all my life seen anything more pleasing to
look upon. The wind blew down her thick locks about her, so that she was
wrapped in a mantle worthy any queen; while with every sweep o' her
strong brown arms the tumbling grain did fall like gold about h