The wind had dropped and the sun blazed in the clear blue of the sky,
which hung full of unravelled white cloud-threads, showing gold at the
edges. A gay light lay over all the young green; the huge fields were
full of waving corn, which swayed and bowed and straightened again,
shining in streaks as under clear, transparent water. The trees stood
turned to the sun, as though painted, so bright that from a distance one
saw all the leaves, finely drawn, gleaming against the shadows that lay
below. Here they stood in close hedges on either side of the road, trunk
after trunk, making a dark wall with a dense roof of leafage, which
presently opened out in a rift at the turn of the road, where four
tree-trunks stood out against the sky; and then the trees turned away to
the left and were drawn up in two new rows, which stretched out beside
the road right across the plain. Here and there a few other trees stood
lonely in the fields, gathered in small clumps, with the light playing
between them; and far away at the edge of the bright expanse, in a wealth
of mingled green, amid the tufted foliage with its changing hues and
shadows, the little pointed church showed above the uneven, red-tiled
roofs. It was all like a restful dream, made up of Sunday peace. Above
and around, all the air was sounding with the gay tripping music of the
three bells as they rang together: a laughing song in the glad sunshine,
summoning from afar the people who came from every side, clad in their
best. The boys, in their new red-brown, fustian breeches, standing stiff
with the tailor's crease in them, and their thick, wide jackets and shiny
hats, held father's hand or skipped round Horieneke, whom they could not
admire enough. In the village square they hid themselves and went to the
booth to see how they could best spend their pennies.

The people stayed in the street, looking about, and did not go into the
church until the little bell tolled out its tinkling summons and the last
little maid had been looked at and had disappeared. Then the men knocked