Brent was up with the dawn. He heard a bird singing somewhere as he went down to the well to fill the bucket, and he stood in the street and looked at the sky with the eyes of a child. In the east and reaching to the zenith great ridges of tawny white cloud broke the intense blue of the sky. A mysterious golden light enveloped everything, the broken walls, the spire of the church, the grey-green hills, the murk of the woods, the tangled, unpruned orchards. Even the cobble-stones had a bloom of gold upon them. The brown blackness of Manon’s house loomed up against the dawn.
Brent’s face was a thing of delight. His beard had a more tawny richness, his eyes a deeper blue.
“By God—life’s good!”
He felt good, good to the core. When he had filled the bucket and drawn it up, the splashing wate
