CHAPTER III

IN THE GAY AND GOLDEN WEATHER

Spring came early and with the first marsh hawk Brian was on the road,
his eager youth crying out to the spring's hope and laughter.
Everywhere he caught the thrill of it. Brooks released from an armor
of ice went singing by him. Hill and meadow deepened verdantly into
smiles. A little while now and the whole green earth in its tenderness
would dimple exquisitely, with every dimple a flower. Mother Earth,
moistening the bare brown fields for the plough with a capricious tear
or so for the banished winter, was beginning again. And so was he.
Hope swelled wistfully within him like song in the throat of the
bluebird and sap in the trees. With the sun warm upon his face and the
gladness of spring in his veins, he sang with Pippa that "God's in his
Heaven, all's right with the world!"

Well, New York, thank God, lay to the back of him, veiling her
realities and truth in glitter, defying nearness. Every human thing
that made for life lay there as surely as it lay here in God's quieter
world, but you never came close to it.

So he tramped away to green fields and hills and winding quiet roads,
spring riding into his heart, invincible and bold.

An arbutus filled him with the wonder of things, a sense of eternity, a
swift, inexplicable compassion, a longing for service to the needs of