The year passed, and the new year came, showing the farm still on the upward struggle, with everyone hard at work, and no one, except Reuben, enjoying it particularly. Luck again favoured Odiam--the lambing of that spring was the best for years, and as the days grew longer the furrows bloomed with tender green sproutings, and hopes of another good harvest ran high. Caro watched the year bud and flower--May came and creamed the hedges with blossom and rusted the grass with the first heats. Then June whitened the fields with big moon-daisies and frothed the banks with chervil and fennel. The evenings were tender, languorous, steeped in the scent of hay. They hurt Caro with their sweetness, so that she scarcely dared lift her eyes to the purpling twilight sky, or breathe the wind that swept up heavy with hay and roses from the fields. July did nothing to heal her--its yellow, heat-throbbing dawns smote her with despair--its noons were a long-drawn ache, and when in the evening hay and dust and drooping chervil troubled the air with shreds and ghosts of scent, something almost akin to madness would twist her heart. She felt as one whose memory calls and yet has nothing to remember, whose thoughts run to and fro and yet has nothing to think of, whose hopes pile themselves, and yet is hopeless, whose love cries out from the depths, and yet is loveless. One evening at the beginning of August she wandered out of the kitchen for a breath of fresh air in the garden before going up to bed. Her head ached, and her cheeks burned from the fire. She did not know it, but the flush and fever made her nearly beautiful. She was not a bad-looking woman, though a trifle too dark and heavy-featured, and now the glow on her cheeks and the restless brilliancy of her eyes had kindled her almost into loveliness. She picked one or two roses that drooped untended against the fence, she held them to her breast, and the tears came into her eyes. It was nearly dark, and the lustreless cobalt sky held only one star--Aldebaran, red above Boarzell's firs. A puff of wind came from the west, and with it a snatch of song. Someone was singing on the Moor, and the far-away voice wove itself into the web of trouble and yearning that dimmed her heart. She moved down to the gate and leaned over it, while her eyes roved the twilight unseeing. The voice on the Moor swelled clearer. It was a man's voice, low-pitched and musical: "Farewell, farewell, you jolly young girls! We're off to Rio Bay!" She remembered that there had been a wedding at Gablehook. One of the farmer's girls had married a Rye fisherman, and this was probably a guest on his way home, a little the worse for drink. "At Vera Cruz the days are fine-- Farewell to Jane and Caroline!" The song with its hearty callousness broke strangely into the dusk and Caro's palpitating dreams. Something about it enticed and troubled her; the singer was coming nearer.