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"But Saunders hes been fillin' his lungs for five and thirty year wi' strong Drumtochty air, an' eatin' naethin' but kirny aitmeal, and drinkin' naethin' but fresh milk frae the coo, an' followin' the ploo through the new-turned sweet-smellin' earth, an' swingin' the scythe in haytime and harvest, till the legs an' airms o' him were iron, an' his chest wes like the cuttin' o' an oak tree.
Each person now grasps her kay-kay with one hand at the middle and the other near the sharpened end and with it rapidly crumbles and spreads about the new-turned soil. Now they trample the bed thoroughly, throwing out any stones or pebbles discovered by their feet, and frequently using the kay-kay further to break up some small clod of earth.
In this venture little could be carried except the man and his life. The frontier graveyard outlined itself dimly against the expanse of landscape. The new-turned clay therein gave him a start. He crept over the border of stones, went close, and leaned down to measure the length of the fresh grave with his outstretched hands. A sigh of relief which was as strong as a sob burst from the soldier.
A grand, sweeping canvas, it might have been, whose browns of new-turned soil, whose light green tints of reborn orchards and sprouting wheat, were gracefully interrupted by the deeper tones of clustered trees those remnants of primeval forest which the unintentional landscape gardeners of pioneer days had chanced to leave standing in this picturesque Kentucky valley.
In the open country the meadow lands lay a sheeny green, the cornfields a dark velvety color, for they were thick and soft with the growing blades. The plowboy shouted in the sun, and in the purple new-turned furrows flocks of birds hunted for fat worms. All the broad moist earth smiled in the warm light, and each little green hill clapped its hand for joy.
It was a little mound of new-turned earth sprinkled with flowers long since withered, and at one end was a flat slab of sandstone stuck in the ground. It was a grave, and it meant for me that I had at last stumbled into a country inhabited by human beings.
And there, all in the tender radiance of the moon, they buried her whose name they never knew, and stood a while in silence. Then, pointing to the new-turned earth, Friar Martin spake soft-voiced: "Lo, here in but a little time, wild flowers shall bloom above her yet none purer or sweeter than she! In a little shall the grass be green again, and she sleep here forgot by all save God!
All this was because of the madness which had come upon Jan the madness which comes upon a man who has stripped off the raw skin of earth and grovelled long in primal nakedness, and before whose eyes rises the fat vales of the homeland, and into whose nostrils steals the whiff of bay, and grass, and flower, and new-turned soil. Through five frigid years Jan had sown the seed.
Indeed, he seemed to prefer his son to his wife, though Ann watched him with jealous affection. Ann Edwards had never walked since the night of her husband's return. She never alluded to it; sometimes her children thought that she had not known it herself. Jerome was still ploughing in the afternoon when his uncle Ozias Lamb came. Ozias stumped softly through the new-turned mould.
It was nearly seven o'clock, and the moon, now at the full, was rising over the eastern hill, and balancing the stubbles and the new-turned plough-lands in the upland cup to a pearly whiteness as they lay under the dark woods and a fleecy sky. There was a sound of a motor in the lane the village taxi bringing the travellers home.
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