The influence of what the pasture had seen must have been breathed on all who entered there that night: something of the immemorial freedom of bright birds in alien woods, of the ancestral kinship of the wild. For that tranquil meadow, long haunted of Jerseys and Guernseys and orioles, expressionless as the hills, dependable as a nurse, had that day known strange breath, strange tramplings, cries and trumpetings, music and colour and life and the beating of wild hearts--and was it not certain that these must change the humour of the place as the coming of the grotesque and the vast alters the humour of the mind? The field bore the semblance of a place exquisitely of the country and, here in the dark, it was inarticulate once more. But something was stirring there, something that swept away what had always been as a wind sweeps, something that caught up the heart of the boy as ancient voices stir in the blood. Timothy cast down his lantern and gathered Liva Vesey in his arms. Her cheek lay against his shoulder and he lifted her face and kissed her, three times or four, with all the love that he bore her. "Liva," he said, "all the time--every day--I've meant this. Did you mean it, too?" She struggled a little from him, but when he would have let her go she stood still in his arms. And then he would have her words and "Did you?" he begged again. He could not hear what she said without bending close, close, and it was the sweeter for that. "Oh, Timmie," she answered, "I don't know. I don't know if I _did_. But I do--now." Timothy's courage came upon him like a mantle. "An' be my wife?" he asked. "An' be ..." Liva assented, and the words faltered away. But they were not greatly missed. Timothy looked over the pasture, and over the world. And lo, it was suddenly as if, with these, he were become articulate, and they were all three saying something together. When they turned, there was the lantern glimmering alight on the trodden turf. And in its little circle of brightness they saw something coloured and soft. It was a gay feather, and Timothy took it curiously in his hand. "See, it's from one of the circus birds," he said. "No!" Liva cried. "It's an oriole feather. One of the pasture orioles, Timmie!" "So it is," he assented, and without knowing why, he was glad that it was so. He folded it away with the violet Liva had gathered that afternoon. After all the strangeness, what he treasured most had belonged to the pasture all the time. "Liva!" he begged. "Will you wear the picture--my picture--in that locket?" "Oh," she said, "Timmie, I'm so sorry. The locket's one I bought cheap in the city, and it don't open." She wondered why that seemed to make him love her more. She wondered a little, too, when on the edge of the pasture Timothy stood still, looking back. "Liva!" he said, "don't the Pump pasture seem differ'nt? Don't it seem like another place?" "Yes," Liva said, "it don't seem the same."