A light wind blew, carrying already a scent from the earth and growth pushing up, for the year was early.
The green Malvern hills rose in the west; and not far away, shrouded by trees, a long country house of weathered brick faced to the south.

Save for the man sowing, and some rooks crossing from elm to elm, no life was visible in all the green land.

And it was quiet--with a strange, a brooding tranquillity.

The fields and hills seemed to mock the scars of road and ditch and furrow scraped on them, to mock at barriers of hedge and wall--between the green land and white sky was a conspiracy to disregard those small activities.

So lonely was it, so plunged in a ground-bass of silence; so much too big and permanent for any figure of man.
Across and across the brown loam the laborer doggedly finished out his task; scattered the few last seeds into a corner, and stood still.
Thrushes and blackbirds were just beginning that even-song whose blitheness, as nothing else on earth, seems to promise youth forever to the land.