soaked into everything and hung trembling like strung pearls on the
leaves of the beech-hedge and on the grass and on the cornstalks in the
fields. It was suddenly winter again. On the hilly field the people stood
black, wrapped up, with their caps drawn over their ears and their red
handkerchiefs round their necks. The hoes went up in the air one after
the other and struck the moist earth, which opened into straight furrows
from one end to the other of the field. Here wives walked barefoot, bent,
with baskets on their arm from which they kept taking potatoes and laying
them, at a foot's distance, in the open trench. In a corner of the field
stood the farmer, his big body leaning on a stick; and his dark eyes
watched his labourers.

There, in the midst of them, was Horieneke, bent also like the others, in
her coarse workaday clothes, with a basket of seed-potatoes on her arm;
and her red-gold curls now hung, like long corkscrews, wet against her
face; and every now and then she would draw herself up, tossing her head
back to keep them out of her eyes.

* * * * *

IN THE SQUALL

* * * * *

VI

IN THE SQUALL

At noon, under the blazing sun, all three started for the wood, after
blackberries.