rang the dinner-bell, not because she could not both see and hear her
master, but because it was the usual thing. To Reddin the bell's rather
cracked note was sardonic, for it was summoning another man to eat and
drink with Hazel. He ate his sandwiches, not being so much in love that
he lost his appetite. Then he sat down and read the racing news. There
was no danger of anyone seeing him, for the place was entirely solitary
with the double loneliness of hill and woodland. There were no children
in the batch except Martha's friend's little boy, and he was timid and
never went bird's-nesting. The only sound except the intermittent song
of birds, was the far-away noise of a woodman's axe, like the deep
scattered barking of hungry hounds. Nothing else stirred under the
complex arches of the trees except the sunlight, moving like a ghost.

These thick woods, remote on their ridges, were to the watchful eye
rich with a half-revealed secret, to the attentive ear full of urgent
voices. The solving of all life's riddles might come to one here at any
moment. In this hour or in the next, from a grey ash-bole or a blood-red
pine-trunk, might come the naked spirit of life with a face fierce
or lovely. Coiled in the twist of long honeysuckle ropes that fell
from the dead yews; curled in a last year's leaf; embattled in a mailed
fir-cone, or resting starrily in the green moss, it seemed that God
slumbered. At any moment He might wake, to bless or curse.

Reddin, not having a watchful eye or an attentive ear for such things,
was not conscious of anything but a sense of loneliness. He read the
paper indefatigably. In an hour or so Edward and Hazel came out again,
she in her new white hat. They went up God's Little Mountain where it
sloped away in pale green illuminated vistas till it reached the dark
blue sky. They disappeared on the skyline, and Reddin impatiently
composed himself for more waiting. Was he never to get a chance of