ragged clouds, without discernible order or direction. Nowhere a
yellow sunbeam glinting on any object, but vast jets of misty
radiance shot downward in far-diverging lines toward the world: as
though above the clouds were piled the waters of light and this
were scant escaping spray.

He walked on, climbing the fences, coming on the familiar sights of
winter woods and fields. Having been away from them for the first
time and that during more than a year, with what feelings he now
beheld them!

Crows about the corn shocks, flying leisurely to the stake-and-
ridered fence: there alighting with their tails pointing toward him
and their heads turned sideways over one shoulder; but soon
presenting their breasts seeing he did not hunt. The solitary caw
of one of them--that thin, indifferent comment of their sentinel,
perched on the silver-gray twig of a sycamore. In another field the
startled flutter of field larks from pale-yellow bushes of ground-
apple. Some boys out rabbit-hunting in the holidays, with red
cheeks and gay woollen comforters around their hot necks and jeans
jackets full of Spanish needles: one shouldering a gun, one
carrying a game-bag, one eating an apple: a pack of dogs and no
rabbit. The winter brooks, trickling through banks of frozen grass
and broken reeds; their clear brown water sometimes open, sometimes
covered with figured ice.

Red cattle in one distant wood, moving tender-footed around the
edge of a pond. The fall of a forest tree sounding distinct amid
the reigning stillness--felled for cord wood. And in one field--
right there before him!--the chopping sound of busy hemp brakes and