CHAPTER I



A great joy has come to me; one of those unexpected gifts which
life loves to bestow after we have learnt to loose our grip of her.
I am back in my own place very near my road--the white gate lies
within my distant vision; near the lean grey Downs which keep watch
and ward between the country and the sea; very near, nay, in the
lap of Mother Earth, for as I write I am lying on a green carpet,
powdered yellow and white with the sun's own flowers; overhead a
great sycamore where the bees toil and sing; and sighing shimmering
poplars golden grey against the blue. The day of Persephone has
dawned for me, and I, set free like Demeter's child, gladden my
eyes with this foretaste of coming radiance, and rest my tired
sense with the scent and sound of home. Away down the meadow I
hear the early scythe song, and the warm air is fragrant with the
fallen grass. It has its own message for me as I lie here, I who
have obtained yet one more mercy, and the burden of it is life, not
death.

I remember when, taking a grace from my road, I helped to mow
Farmer Marler's ten-acre field, rich in ripe upstanding grass. The
mechanism of the ancient reaper had given way under the strain of
the home meadows, and if this crop was to be saved it must be by
hand. I have kept the record of those days of joyous labour under
a June sky. Men were hard to get in our village; old Dodden, who
was over seventy, volunteered his services--he had done yeoman work
with the scythe in his youth--and two of the farm hands with their
master completed our strength.