Under a sky that is infinite and a heaven accessible to all, the poor "work for their living," bowed always a little towards tragedy yet understanding joy, from the bitterness of life and death and the added anguish of ignorance drinking often their safety. CHAPTER II It was evening in the country at harvest-time, at that moment towards sundown when the light, about to be withdrawn, glows with a fulness of gold which makes it seem impossible that it can ever die. The earth was heavy with fruition, every square field brimful of the ungathered harvest. The heavy corn swayed almost by reason of its own weight. A thunderstorm would beat it prostrate in an hour. All the crops were full and good, some almost level with the low hedges. Heat seemed to radiate from the yellow mass, that scorching heat which in autumn never seems to leave the earth, but to linger about the ground, surrounding the responsive and standing corn. But the day had brought no heaviness to the sky, blue without a cloud, only a grave and increasing heat, a sun which blinded the eyes and seemed to take no account of anything save its steady purpose of ripening the fruit and grain. Looking round one saw that it was not an impressive country. There were no hills, no grandeurs, no proximity to the sea. It was a country whose pageants were made, not by great heights or sombre woods, but by the orderly and coloured procession of the harvests; where one recovered the preoccupied sight of little children, seeing so much to absorb one near the ground that one did not seek the horizon; where matters were measured and done not by the clock but by the sun's height, by midday heat and darkness, by the lowing of cows or the calling of lambs. A woman, well on the way to middle age, sat in the house-place of a small cottage on the white high-road. Everything had been done for the night, the pigs and pony fed; the cow milked and the milk strained; the churn cleaned and the cream standing. The hens had been driven in and were almost asleep on their perches. The wood was ready for the morning and the clock had been wound up. She had not had her supper yet she did not remove her sun-bonnet or yard-boots. She cut herself a slice of stale bread and a large piece of cheese, dipped a cup in the barrel of buttermilk and sat down on a low stool with the bread and cheese in one hand and the cup of milk in the other. She was evidently in great perturbation, for at times she forgot to eat altogether and sat with the bread and cheese suspended in her hand while she thought deeply. Her rather large plain features had a dignity of expression which was pleasing, though it betrayed a tendency to melancholy. She had no frown, for her blue eyes were of excellent strength and one does not sit up late in the country. She was tall and rather bony, a strong peasant woman.