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To the left of the line as you travel westward there lies a long grassy meadow on a gentle acclivity, set with three or four umbrageous oaks and backed by a steep plantation of oak saplings. At the foot of the meadow, close alongside the line, runs a brook, which is met at the meadow's end by a second brook which crosses under the permanent way through a culvert.
Here he helped her to disembark, and waited with his back to the shore. The spinster behind the hazel screen pulled off shoes and stockings, and paddled about for a minute in the dewy grass that fringed the meadow's lower slope. Then, drawing a saucer from her reticule, she wrung some dew into it and bathed her face. Ten minutes later she re-appeared on the river's bank. "A happy May, John!"
Pete became restless, and walked to and fro, peering out at intervals by the window that looked on to the road. At this there was some pushing and nudging and indulgent whispering. "It's the girl! Aw, be aisy with the like! Five years apart, be aisy!" "The meadow's white with the gulls sitting together like parrots; what's that a sign of, father?" said Pete.
Ned and he were busy putting the can of Tom's new chemical extinguisher in the airship when the door of the hangar was suddenly opened and a very much excited man entered crying: "Fire! Fire! Bless my kitchen sink, your meadow's on fire, Tom Swift! It's blazing high! Fire! Fire!"
Venters approached the willow and cottonwood belt that he had observed from the height of slope. He penetrated it to find a considerable stream of water and great half-submerged mounds of brush and sticks, and all about him were old and new gnawed circles at the base of the cottonwoods. "Beaver!" he exclaimed. "By all that's lucky! The meadow's full of beaver! How did they ever get here?"
That evening, as the dusk was coming on, Hester Charner walked on the path along the lake, round toward the forest, and suddenly in a shaded place she met the unkempt stranger of the boat She started back and almost screamed. His face had a dark look that scared her. "Is it you, Mr. Meadow?" she entreated. "No," he answered: "Meadow's dead drowned in the lake for ever, I hope to God."
And through the dewy meadow's breast, fringed with shade, but touched on one side with the sun-smile, ran the crystal water, curving in its brightness like diverted hope. On either bank, the blades of grass, making their last autumn growth, pricked their spears and crisped their tuftings with the pearly purity.
A great oak stands at the meadow's neck, an oak with gnarled and wandering roots where a man may rest, for it is bare of daffodils save for a group of three, and a solitary one apart growing close to the old tree's side.
Meadow's corn-field from the road; and here, screened by the wall on one side and by corn on the other, they intended to roll the little "coffin nails," and smoke them unseen. The minister's boy, whose name was Johnny Brighton, and who was an innocent, unsuspicious child, agreed that it would be a fine, manly thing to smoke. So the lads waited and planned, and now their opportunity had come.
At Meadow's End, though he works in the garden in a dilettante sort of way with Lavinia, takes long walks with father, and occasionally ventures out for a day's fishing with either or both of my men, he is still the bookworm who dives into his library upon every opportunity and has never yet adapted his spine comfortably to the curves of a hammock!
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