Blue above--a deep, joyous blue, against which a white cloud rested or
slowly travelled westward; a sky down whose vast cerulean bowl flocks of
wild geese sailed, white and grey and black, while the woods across the
Sagalac were glowing with a hundred colours, giving tender magnificence
to the scene. The busy eagerness of a pioneer life was still a quiet,
orderly thing, so immense was the theatre for effort and movement. In
these wide streets, almost as wide as a London square, there was room to
move; nothing seemed huddled, pushing, or inconvenient. Even the
disorder of building lost its ugly crudity in the space and the sunlight.

"The only time I get frightened in life is when things look like that,"
Ingolby answered. "I go round with a life-preserver on me when it seems
as if 'all's right with the world.'"

The violin inside the barber-shop kept scraping out its cheap music--a
coon-song of the day.

"Old Berry hasn't much business this morning," remarked Rockwell.
"He's in keeping with this surface peace."

"Old Berry never misses anything. What we're thinking, he's thinking.
I go fishing when I'm in trouble; Berry plays his fiddle. He's a
philosopher and a friend."

"You don't make friends as other people do."

"I make friends of all kinds. I don't know why, but I've always had a
kind of kinship with the roughs, the no-accounts, and the rogues."

"As well as the others--I hope I don't intrude!"