cannot be hid."

When tea-time came I crossed the field to look for a missing hone,
and saw Elizabeth Banks far from the other women, busied with a
bundle under the hedge. I passed close on my search, and lo! the
bundle was a little boy. He lay smiling and stretching, fighting
the air with his small pink fists, while the wind played with his
curls. "A curse that cannot be hid," old Dodden had said. The
mother knelt a moment, devouring him with her eyes, then snatched
him to her with aching greed and covered him with kisses. I saw
the poor, plain face illumined, transfigured, alive with a mother's
love, and remembered how the word came once to a Hebrew prophet:-


Say unto your brethren Ammi, and to your sisters Ruhamah.


The evening sky was clouding fast, the sound of rain was in the
air; Farmer Marler shook his head as he looked at the grass lying
in ordered rows. I was the last to leave, and as I lingered at the
gate drinking in the scent of the field and the cool of the coming
rain, the first drops fell on my upturned face and kissed the poor
dry swathes at my feet, and I was glad.

David, child of the fields and the sheepfolds, his kingship laid
aside, sees through the parted curtain of the years the advent of
his greater Son, and cries in his psalm of the hilltops, his last
prophetic prayer:-