of the life in the mine, of the birds that flew overhead and why they
wheeled and flew in great ovals in the sky. He looked at the fallen
trees in the woods and wondered what made them fall and whether the
others would presently fall in their turn.

Over the hill went the silent pair and through the pinewood to an
eminence half way down the farther side. When the boy saw the valley
lying so green and broad and fruitful at their feet he thought it the
most wonderful sight in the world. He was not surprised that his
father had brought him there. Sitting on the ground he opened and
closed his eyes, his soul stirred by the beauty of the scene that lay
before them.

On the hillside Cracked McGregor went through a kind of ceremony.
Sitting upon a log he made a telescope of his hands and looked over
the valley inch by inch like one seeking something lost. For ten
minutes he would look intently at a clump of trees or a spot in the
river running through the valley where it broadened and where the
water roughened by the wind glistened in the sun. A smile lurked in
the corners of his mouth, he rubbed his hands together, he muttered
incoherent words and bits of sentences, once he broke forth into a low
droning song.

On the first morning, when the boy sat on the hillside with his
father, it was spring and the land was vividly green. Lambs played in
the fields; birds sang their mating songs; in the air, on the earth
and in the water of the flowing river it was a time of new life.
Below, the flat valley of green fields was patched and spotted with
brown new-turned earth. The cattle walking with bowed heads, eating
the sweet grass, the farmhouses with red barns, the pungent smell of