GOLDEN-BROWN. 20 



day ; they could stay on while the moon rose over the 

 corn, and till the silent stars at silent midnight shone 

 in the cool summer night, and on and on till the cock 

 crew and the faint dawn appeared. The whole time 

 in the open air, resting at mid-day under the elms 

 with the ripple of heat flowing through the shadow ; 

 at midnight between the ripe corn and the hawthorn 

 hedge on the white wild camomile and the poppy pale 

 in the duskiness, with face upturned to the thoughtful 

 heaven. 



Consider the glory of it, the life above this life to 

 be obtained from constant presence with the sunlight 

 and the stars. I thought of them all day, and envied 

 them (as they envied me), and in the evening I found 

 them again. It was growing dark, and the shadow 

 took away something of the coarseness of the group 

 outside one of the village *' pothouses." Green foliage 

 overhung them and the men with whom they were 

 drinking ; the white pipes, the blue smoke, the flash 

 of a match, the red sign which had so often swung 

 to and fro in the gales now still in the summer eve, 

 the rude seats and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound 

 about the edge with hay, the white dogs creeping 

 from knee to knee, some such touches gave an interest 

 to the scene. But a quarrel had begun; the men 

 swore, but the women did worse. It it impossible to 

 give a hint of the language they used, especially the 

 elder of the three whose hollow face was blackened 

 by time and exposure. The two golden-brown girls 

 where so heavily intoxicated they could but stagger 

 to and fro and mouth and gesticulate, and one held a 

 quart from which, as she moved, she spilled the ale. 



