The girl, stormful and rebellious, had come out of the old farmhouse above Fraternity, and without much caring in which direction she turned, walked across the stubble of the freshly cut meadow toward the edge of the woods at the crest of the hill. This meadow was really a high plateau; it was fringed with bushes which grew along the crumbling stone wall which bordered it, and with birch and wild cherry trees here and there along its edge. Between these trees she could look abroad across a wooded valley, down whose middle meandered the dead water of the George’s River, backed up by the mill dam at the village. There had been a light shower at dawn, scarce sufficient to settle the dust; and the air, thus clarified, lent lovely colors to the countryside. Deep green of hemlock and spruce and pine, straggling tracery of hackmatack, lighter green of the birch tops almost yellow in the heart of the woods; the blue of distant hillsides; the blue of the sky; the yellow glory of sunlight drenching everything. In an uncut strip of meadow white daisies bloomed. There were birds about. But to all these matters, Lucia Moore was oblivious. She knew only that her father was stubborn and unreasonable, her mother supine, the world at an ill turn. Drops of water on the stubble wet her ankles; dust and water combined to muddy her impracticable shoes; an occasional bramble tore at her silken stockings. She came to the stone wall at the brink of the hill and chose a large boulder half-shaded by an apple tree that was all run to suckers, and sat down on it, her feet propped upon a stone below, her elbows on her knees, her chin cupped in her hands. The girl’s eyes were sulky, and her lips pouted. There was a hint of color not their own upon these lips of hers, and her eyebrows were plucked to a thin line, their smooth arch distorted by the frown she wore. Her gingham dress was short, and her present posture revealed her thin, unformed legs, which confirmed the almost emaciated slimness of her figure. She stared unseeingly across the lovely land.