Rain-water dribbled off his cap on to his hot face and his
feet were soaking. Joan was breathless with haste; her draggled skirts
clung to her; and the struggle against the storm made her giddy.
So they reached the place of shelter; and the gale burst over it with a
great, crowning yell of wind and hurtle of rain. Then John Barren opened
the byre door and Joan Tregenza passed in before him; whereupon he followed
and shut the door.
A loose slate clattered upon the roof, and from inside the byre it sounded
like a hand tapping high above the artist's bed of brown fern--tapping some
message which neither the man nor the girl could read--tapping, tapping,
tapping tirelessly upon ears wholly deaf to it.
BOOK TWO
NATURE
CHAPTER ONE
AN INTERVAL
For a week the rain came down and it blew hard from the west. Then the
weather moderated, and there were intervals of brightness and mild, damp
warmth that brought a green veil trembling over the world like magic. The
elms broke into a million buds, the pear trees in sunny corners put forth
snowy flowers; the crimson knobs of the apple-blossom prepared to unfold.
In the market gardens around and about Newlyn the plums were already
setting, the wallflowers, which make a carpet of golden-brown beneath the
fruit-trees in many orchards, were velvety with bloom; the raspberry canes,
bent hoop-like in long rows, beautifully brightened the dark earth with
young green; and verdure likewise twinkled even to the heart of the
forests, to the stony nipples of the moor's vast, lonely bosom.
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