He could
feel again the inward lift, the flying out of his spirit in a rush of
welcoming ecstasy, as he saw the woods hanging misty on the horizon and
the clay bluffs, below which the slow, quiet river uncoiled its yellow
length.
The days at the farm had been the happiest of his life--wonderful days
of fishing and swimming, of sitting in gnarled tree boughs so still the
nesting birds lost their fear and came back to their eggs. For hours
he had lain in patches of shade watching the cloud shadows on the
fields, and the great up-pilings when storms were coming, rising
black-bosomed against the blue. There had been some dark moments to
throw out these brighter ones--when chickens were killed and he had
tried to stand by and look swaggeringly unconcerned as a boy should,
while he sickened internally and shut his lips over pleadings for
mercy. And there was an awful day when pigs were slaughtered, and no
one knew that he stole away to the elder thickets by the river,
burrowed deep into them, and stopped his ears against the shrill,
agonized cries. He knew such weakness was shameful and hid it with a
child's subtlety.
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