She left the barn and walked on to the orchard. The apples had been gathered, but a few red orbs yet hung from the branches. She walked beneath the trees and she thought of old, dull troubles and anxieties that had attended her life. This morning light seemed at work among them, disintegrating them. The sun came down between the trees. The air blew soft and fine. She returned to the house, and upon the porch steps found Mrs. Cliff with baskets to sell, woven of white-oak splits, in a mountain cabin, by her son and herself. She was waiting for Marget and seemed content to wait as long as the sun shone. She wore a faded calico and a brown sunbonnet, and she dipped snuff. "Good morning!" "Mornin'!" Mrs. Cliff put her snuffbox in her pocket. "Don't you want to buy a basket? These three are fer Miss Marget." Miss Darcy examined and admired. "I'd like this little one." Mrs. Cliff put it aside. "I hain't seen you here before." "I've just come. You've got a lovely country." "Yaas. We think so. Do you see yon clearing on mountain? I come from thar." Miss Darcy sat down, and she and the mountain woman talked of basket weaving and of the times, which Mrs. Cliff said were hard. "What do you think sugar is? An' what you got to give fer a pair of shoes? You've got to sit an' fergit, even while you're rememberin', or you don't git nowhar! I wish Jesus Christ would come on back!" "He is somewhat needed," Anna Darcy agreed. "I had a funny thing happen to me yesterday," said Mrs. Cliff. "I had jest finished that basket. I was setting on the step an' awful tired, an' I shet my eyes an' leaned my head back against the door. An jest like that I thought, 'He's in little bits in all of us, an' we've got to put him together.' An' jest thinking it, all in a minute I felt so big and rested! But it couldn't last. I wish it would come again." Marget's voice was heard, speaking to Zinia. "She's come back. They're mighty kind folk here!" "I know that." "They _like_ doin' you a good turn," said Mrs. Cliff, and, getting to her feet, gathered up her baskets. IV In the afternoon the three and Tam went for a walk. They crossed the river by a footbridge and walked a mile by waterside. This brought them to valley end. The stream slipped on between close-standing hills, but the strollers turned aside into a glade from which the greater forest had been cut. Young trees and tall old trees were set with some spareness. All wore robes like princes; all glowed in a dream of spring behind winter. The ground had gray moss and green moss, and all manner of minute and charming growths. The sun so came into this glade that the wild grape found and took advantage. It leaned its wine-hued, shaggy stem against trunks; it climbed and overran, and made bridges from tree to tree. Its festoons shone aloft, its broad leaves and blue clusters dreamed against autumn sky. The air breathed dry and fine. Sunshine lay on ground in shafts and plaques of gold.