near, in order not to miss the cuckoo's popping out. And in the duller
spaces, when the door was shut, I have fancied it sitting in the dark and
counting the minutes to itself.

The Switzer's specialty was the making of a kind of rubber cheese which one
could learn to like in time. Of the processes of its composition, I can
remember nothing except that when it was in the great press the whey ran
from its sides, but this may be common to all cheeses. I was once given a
cup of this whey to drink and I brightened, for until it was in my mouth,
I thought it was buttermilk. Beyond was the spring-house with cans of milk
set in the cool water and with a trickling sound beneath the boards. From
the spring-house there started those mysterious cow-paths that led down
into the great gorge that cut the farm. Here were places so deep that only
a bit of the sky showed and here the stones were damp. It was a place that
seemed to lie nearer to the confusion when the world was made, and rocks
lay piled as though a first purpose had been broken off. And to follow a
cow-path, regardless of where it led, was, in those days, the essence of
hazard; though all the while from the pastures up above there came the flat
safe tinkling of the bells.

The apple orchard--where Dolly was stung by the bee--was set on a fine
breezy place at the brow of the hill with the valley in full sight. The
trees themselves were old and decayed, but they were gnarled and crotched
for easy climbing. And the apples--in particular a russet--mounted to a
delicacy. On the other side of the valley, a half mile off as a bird would
fly, were the buildings of a convent, and if you waited you might hear
the twilight bell. To this day all distant bells come to my ears with a
pleasing softness, as though they had been cast in a quieter world. Stone
arrow-heads were found in a near-by field as often as the farmer turned up
the soil in plowing. And because of this, a long finger of land that put