She dressed as usual, looked lovingly at the small face of the little sleeper in the crib, and went out, soft-footed, to start the kitchen fire. That done, she took the pail and went out to the well. She rested the bucket on the curb a moment, lifted the well-board, and stood looking at the faint aureole of light that was beginning to crown Rainbow Cliff. The cliff itself was black, blue-black as deepest indigo, its foot lost in the shadows that deepened down Mystery Ridge. She could hear the murmuring of Nameless, soft and mysterious in the dawn, feel the little wind that was beginning to stir to greet the coming day. Then, as was her habit, she turned her eyes out across the waving green field of her precious corn. It must be earlier than she thought, she reflected, for there was not the shimmer of light which usually met her gaze. She looked again at the eastern sky. Why, yes—it was light as usual there. Once more she looked at the field—then she leaned forward, peering hard, her hands still lying on the bucket’s rim. Her brows drew down together as she strained her sharp sight to focus on what she saw—or what she thought she saw. For a long time she stood so. Then, as realization struck home to her consciousness, the hands on the bucket gripped down until the knuckles shone white under the tanned skin. Her lips fell open loosely. The breath stopped for a moment in her lungs and she felt as if she were drowning. An odd dizziness attacked her brain, so that the dim world of shadow and light wavered grotesquely. Her knees seemed buckling beneath her and for the first time in her life she felt as if she might faint.... Her Mammy had fainted once—when they brought John Allison home.... But she gathered herself with a supreme effort, closed her lips, wet them with her tongue, straightened her shoulders and, taking her hands from their grip on the pail, walked out toward the field. At the gate she stopped and gazed dully at the ruin before her. Where yesterday had been a vigorous, lusty, dark green growth, fair to her sight as the edges of Paradise, there was now the bald, piteous unsightliness of destruction. Of all the great field there was scarcely a dozen stalks left standing. It was a sodden mass of trampled pulp, cut and slashed and beaten into the loose earth by hundreds of milling hoofs. Far across at the upper end she could dimly see in the growing light a huge gap in the fence—two, three posts were entirely gone. It had taken many head of cattle, driven in and harried, to work that havoc. It was complete. For a long, long time Nance Allison stood and looked at it. Then with a sigh that seemed the embodiment of all weariness, she turned away and went slowly back to the cabin. At the open door she met Bud and pushed him back with both hands. Her mother was at the stove, lifting a lid. At sight of her daughter’s face she held it in mid-air. “Hold hard, girl,” she said quietly, “what’s up?”