They had now great strength and health, Joan’s renewed, Aderhold’s such as it had never been. They stood erect and bright-eyed, their movements had rhythm, the hand went with precision to its task, the glance fell unerringly, the foot bore them lightly. They bent to life with a smile, frequently with laughter. If life was always a mighty riddle, if at times it seemed a vivid disaster, yet indubitably there were stretches, as now, when it became a splendid possession! “‘I have heard talk of bold Robin Hood, And of brave Little John, Of Friar Tuck and Will Scarlett, Locksley and Maid Marian—’” sang Joan. She wove as she sang, for there was cotton for weaving, and she had learned of the Indian women and greatly bettered their instruction. She saw garments for them both, hanging from the pegs, lying upon the shelves Aderhold had made. She had traded her skill at many things for needles of bone, for the vegetable dyes that the women used, for various matters that she wanted. She was of all women most fit for such a return to a younger world. Sane and strong and skilled, with the artist arisen from the mere workwoman, she turned back some thousand years, and handled savage life with a creative hand. On all sides latent power came forth. A wise trader, she gathered what she needed; a good teacher, she imparted knowledge as she went, without ostentation, insensibly, with a fine unconsciousness; a worker of the best, she did that which her hand found to do with _élan_ and precision and an assured result upon which to base further results. She lacked not for leisure either, nor for a whimsical, sceptical glance upon her own labours, nor for an ability to let it all slip aside while she sat and brooded upon the open sea. As for Aderhold, he was and was not the man of the Oak Grange. He was that man freed where he had been bound, fed where he had been starved. Their domain grew in fitness and beauty. By the time the perfect winter had passed into the languors of spring, and spring into the heats and rains of summer, and summer again into cooler, fairer days, they had achieved about them an Arcadian right simplicity, as far from meagreness as from excess. The large hut, palm-thatched, stood in a well-stocked garden. Great trees gave them shade; a spring of clear water for ever a cooling, trickling sound. Around all they planted a flowering hedge. Within this round sounded the hum of their industries and their own clear voices. Without was the eternal voice of the sea, and in and out and around, the voice of the moving air.