ter and shout, the lads raced
hither and thither from their stolid elders, and here and there jackets
carried the mark of a snowball. Behind the procession a trampled grey
line stretched out under the moonlight. Then all passed like some dim,
magic pageant of a dream; the distant dark blot of naked woodlands
swallowed them up, and the voices grew faint and ceased. Only the
endless song of the river sounded, with a new note struck into it by the
world of snow.
For a few moments the valley was left empty, so empty that a fox, who
had been prowling unsuccessfully about Monks Barton since dusk, took the
opportunity to leave his hiding-place above the ducks' pool, cross the
meadows, and get him home to his earth two miles distant. He slunk with
pattering foot across the snow, marking his way by little regular
paw-pits and one straight line where his brush roughened the surface.
Steam puffed in jets from his muzzle, and his empty belly made him angry
with the world. At the edge of the woods he lifted his head, and the
moonlight touched his green eyes. Then he recorded a protest against
Providence in one eerie bark, and so vanished, before the weird sound
had died.
Phoebe Lyddon and her lover, having given the others some vantage of
ground, followed them to their destination--Mr. Lyddon's famous orchard
in Teign valley. The girl's dreary task of late had been to tell herself
that she would surely love John Grimbal presently--love him as such a
good man deserved to be loved. Only under the silence and in the
loneliness of long nights, only in the small hours of day, when sleep
would not come and pulses were weak, did Phoebe confess that contact
with him hurt her, that his kisses made her giddy to sickness, that all
his gifts put together were less to her than one treasure she was too
weak to destroy--the last letter Will had written. Once or twice, not to
her future husband, but to the miller, Phoebe had ventured faintly to
question still the promise of this great step; but Mr. Lyddon qu
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