As he stood there, feeling a keener joy than he could ever remember the personal having given him, all his philosophy, all his changing beliefs in what was most worth while, resolved themselves into the passionate cry:  “Let beauty not die for me....  May dawn and sunset, twilight and storm, hold their thrill to the last; may the young moon still cradle magic and the old moon image peace; may the wind never fail to blow freedom into my nostrils, and the sunlight strike to my heart till I die.  And if colour, light, shadow, and sound of birds’ calling all fall away from my failing senses, at least let the touch of earth be sweet to my fingers and the air to my eyelids.”

BOOK V

HARVEST

CHAPTER I

THE FOUR-ACRE

A little boy was riding into Cloom farmyard astride a big carthorse, whistling and beating time with a toy switch upon its irresponsive flanks.  He was so small that his bare brown legs stuck straight out on either side of him, but he sat upright and clutched the dark tangled mane firmly.  The horse planted his big gleaming hoofs with care, his broad haunches heaved slightly as he went, and the child swayed securely to the action.  Beside the horse’s arched neck walked an old man, less sure of step than the animal; the child drummed with his sandalled feet against the round sides of his steed and managed to kick the old man as he did so.

“Oh, I’m sorry, Granpa!” he said in a clear treble, laughing a little, not because he thought it was funny to have hit his grandfather, but because it was such a fine day and it was so jolly on the big horse, and he knew his grandfather would understand that he could not help laughing at everything.  The old man put up his hand and laid it gently on the slim brown leg, keeping it there till the horse stopped in the middle of the yard, when he held up both his arms and the boy slipped down into them.

“Jim!” called at woman’s voice from the house.  “Jim!  Hurry up; it’s past lesson-time.”

“Bother!” said Jim regretfully; “it’s always lesson-time just as I’m really occupied.  I wish I was a grown-up and could do what I liked.”

The old man did not contradict him with a well-worn platitude, because he knew that in the way the child meant grown-ups did have a great deal of freedom.

“You wouldn’t like to be as old as I am, would you, Jim?” he asked.  Jim regarded him thoughtfully; evidently this was the first time he had even imagined such a thing ever being possible.  He cast about in his mind to think of some answer that would not hurt his grandfather’s feelings.

“Well, perhaps not quite as old as you, Granpa!” he said; “as old as Daddy; not with white hair like you—­just a grown-up man.”

“Jim ...!” came the voice again more insistently, and his mother appeared at the back door and stood framed in its arch of carved granite.  Marjorie Ruan was still a fine young woman; her thirty-odd years sat lightly upon her.  Her tanned skin and the full column of her long, bare throat gave her a look of exuberant health.  She was dressed in a smart suit of white linen and her brown head was bare.