At night, with the curtains drawn, and by the light of an oil lamp whose smell was ever after associated in Peter's mind with these rustic days, he played with the books which Marbury had packed for him. Among them was Burton's _Arabian Nights_ and Urquhart's _Rabelais_. Marbury had well chosen. Peter had never felt before the wonder of _Rabelais_. Here, alone with the beasts and with people whose lives were taken up with their feeding and breeding, Peter smelt in _Rabelais_ the fresh dirt and sweat of the earth. He squarely received between his shoulders the hearty slap of a laughter broad as mankind. _Rabelais_ was the evening chorus of his day in the fields. The voices of the hearty morning, the slow noon, and the quiet evening sounded between the lines where Grangousier warmed his great bulk by the fire and Gargantua thrived to enormous manhood. It was only after many days that Peter looked into Burton. He wondered why Marbury should have included a book he knew only as a series of pretty tales. Then he found that beside his _Rabelais_ upon the shelf was the greatest song of the flesh yet uttered. After his first night with Burton, Peter flung wide his window to the air. A cat slunk cautiously into the garden and away. The farmer and his wife came out for a moment to read the sky, and stood in the light of the door. The old man lifted his face, and was moulded clearly in silhouette--a face beaten hard with weather, but untroubled after seventy years of appetites healthily satisfied. He was sagacious as befitted his high species; he had eaten and drunk for sixty-five years, and had bred of his kind. All this he had inevitably done as a creature with his spade in the earth and his hand heavy upon the inferior beasts. Mere flesh and blood was good, and it endured. Peter's heart was pulsing now with a song older than an English farmer--a song of man who was tickled under an Eastern sun and laughed, who was pricked with absolute lust--who found his flesh not an obstacle between himself and heaven, but his heritage and expression. Peter was not thinking. He idly looked and received a faint rain of impressions from the still night and from memories of a tale. A barrier of fresh earth mounted between him and his troubles of the year. He was content to rest and dream. He turned from the window, weary with air and sun, stretching his elbows in an agreeable yawn. He felt the clean flexion of the muscles of his arm. He stretched again, repeating a healthy pleasure, and yawned happily to bed. Haymaking under a burning sun began on the following day, and Peter offered help to the farmer. The old man looked favourably at Peter's broad shoulders and friendly eyes. Then there were long back-breaking hours in the open field. Peter learned why there was leisure and grace in the movements of his companion, and tried to imitate, under pleasant chaff, the expert's artful economy of power.