He felt when evening came, and the field was mown, a glad release, curiously dashed with regret. His room had about it the atmosphere of a sanctuary. He was grateful for the peace it held, yet it was also desolate. After supper he sat at the window, watching the hills fade into a violet sky. As the light softened he heard once again a low song from the orchard. Peter's heart started like a spurred horse. The song continued--the faint crooning, as it were, of a thoughtful bird--and at last it became intolerable. Peter shut down his window and opened a book upon the table near him. It was a volume of Burton left from last evening. It fell open easily at a page; and, as Peter lifted it in the dim light, he read the title of a frank and merry tale concerning the way of a woman with a boy less willing than she. Peter suddenly dashed down the book as though he had been stung. Flouting his eyes between the leaves of this tale was a fragment of cherry-coloured ribbon. He went from the house into the warm air, and flung himself down on the cut grass. He felt as if he were being hunted. In vain he avoided the image of the girl who had challenged him. He shut his eyes, and she again stood clearly before him in the hot sun. He buried his ears in the cool grass, and he heard her low singing. Then, in a sudden surrender, he suppressed his shy terror, and in fancy looked at her as in the flesh he had not dared to look, tracing between himself and the sky the outline of her lips and throat. How sultry it was, and still! The air was waiting oppressively for a storm. Peter felt himself in tune with the hanging thunder. He felt he would like to hear the running water of the brook. The pearly wreck of a sunset lighted him down the hill, and soon he was sitting in a chosen nook of the river, his ears refreshed by small noises of the stream. The silence was deep, for there was not a breath in the valley. The trees seemed to be mildly brooding--sentient sad creatures waiting for the air. Once Peter heard the bracken stir; but the silence closed again over the faint sound, leaving the world waiting as for a signal. It seemed as if Nature was standing there bidding the earth be still till the creature she had vowed to subdue was beaten down. Peter flung his thoughts to the blank silence of the place, and they returned, reverberating and enforced. Suddenly a shot shivered the silence into quick echoes. Peter guessed the farmer was in the warren after rabbits. Thinking to meet him and get away from the intolerable obsession of the day, he started to climb the hill. The second shot rang out surprisingly near, and almost immediately a figure rose from a bush among the bracken. It was the farmer's granddaughter. He cried out in surprise, and the figure turned. She greeted him with an inquiring lilt of the voice. Peter came awkwardly forward. "Did you hit?" he asked, for talking's sake. "Two."