Summer clouds, sunny-hearted and towering against the blue, dropped immense
shadows on the glimmering gold of much stubble and on the wastes of the
moor rising above them. In the cornfields, visible now that the crops were
cut and gathered into mows, stood little gray-green islands--a mark
distinctive of Cornish husbandry. Here grew cow-cabbages in rank
luxuriance, on mounds of manure which would be presently scattered over the
exhausted land. The little oases in the deserts of the fields were too
familiar to arrest Joan's eye. She merely glanced at the garnered wheat and
thought what a brief time the arrish geese, stuffing themselves in the
stubble, had yet to live. A solemn, splendid peace held the country-side,
and hardly a soul was abroad where the road led upward to wild moor and
waste. Sometimes a group of calves crowding under the shady side of hedges
regarded Joan with youthful interest; sometimes, in a distant coomb-bottom,
where blackberries grew, little sunbonnets bobbed above the fern and a
child's shrill voice came clear to her upon the wind. But the loneliness
grew, and, anon, turning from her way a while, the traveler sat on the gray
crown of Trengwainton Carn to rest and look at the wide world.
From the little tor, over undulations of broad light and blue shadow, Joan
could see afar to Buryan's lofty tower, to Paul above the sea, to
Sancreed's sycamores and to Drift beyond them.
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