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I recalled the crippled goose which the farmer's boy chased around a hay-stack for the better part of a June afternoon, and only saw once; the goose being detained that particular once with the dog of the establishment. This dog ranged the countryside for many years thereafter, but couldn't be coaxed past a load of hay, and was even sceptical of corn-shocks.
The burning colors died out in a few minutes, and the fields darkened, and all the corn-shocks paled until they became quite white, like rows of tents, under the harvest moon. Another night had come in this year of war. Up Ypres way the guns were busy, and at regular intervals the earth trembled, and the air vibrated with dull, thunderous shocks.
There were cattle in the pasture near at hand, but no human being to observe his actions. In a distant upland field men were moving among a multitude of corn-shocks, trailing the horses and wagons that belonged to Alix Crown.
There was no inclosed patch of vegetable-ground near, no stable, improvised of corn-shocks, for the shelter of cow or pig, and the habitation seemed not only to be untenanted, but to have been forsaken years before.
"Art is impossible to little people, to those who starve the big side of their nature, for fear of Mrs. Grundy. Look at the real people Rachel, Wagner, Turner, Bernhardt, and a thousand others. Were they bound by the marriage laws? What will these crowds of tiny men and petty women do who come from the country parlors and corn-shocks of the West?
It was a poem of blue eyes like spring violets, of tender, loving words, of mellow moonlight on the fields where the corn-shocks stood in spectral rows, and the brook they crossed looked like a rippling stream of silver; where the maples along the lane, still clad in yellow foliage, cast mottled shadows in their pathway, and the fallen leaves rustled beneath their feet.
As the young man heard the crows chatter around the corn-shocks and the mocking-bird in some alder-thicket answer and sauce the catbird's scream, he said to himself: "Every thing is attached by an inner chord to something else, and that other thing, free-hearted, carols or quarrels back except father to me. Can I not, too, find something to love me?
The corn-shocks were standing in the stubbled fields, and the night air was full of gossamer, which twined itself about the faces of all wayfarers. Rural work had gone on merrily all day, and when the sun set silence fell, and darkness like a warm shroud. Lights flickered a while in the village and the farmhouse, and then went out one by one.
The roofs were shot to pieces; the corn-shocks scattered about, the bodies of men mortally wounded stretched upon them here and there; and occasionally a spent cannon-ball fell and rattled among the ruins of the the roofs.
I could not make out what it was, for the wind-was rustling the corn-shocks, but I arose and feigned to listen. "It's Tim," said I. "He's calling to you, Josiah. It's something about your red heifer." "Red heifer I haven't no red heifer," returned the old man. "Did I say heifer? I should have said hog excuse me," said I, blandly. "But I have killed all my hogs," Josiah replied, undisturbed.
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