He
felt the light and life about him; heard the clatter of the blackbirds
above him; heard the homing bees hum by, and saw the vista of white road
and level landscape, framed on two sides by the branches of the grove, a
vista of infinitely stretching fields of green, lined here and there with
woodlands and flat to the horizon line, the village lying in their lap. No
roll of meadow, no rise of pasture land, relieved their serenity nor
shouldered up from them to be called a hill. A second great flock of
blackbirds was settling down over the Plattville maples. As they hung in
the fair dome of the sky below the few white clouds, it occurred to
Harkless that some supping god had inadvertently peppered his custard, and
now inverted and emptied his gigantic blue dish upon the earth, the
innumerable little black dots seeming to poise for a moment, then floating
slowly down from the heights.
A farm-bell rang in the distance, a tinkling coming small and mellow from
far away, and at the lonesomeness of that sound he heaved a long, mournful
sigh. The next instant he broke into laughter, for another bell rang over
the fields, the court-house bell in the Square. The first four strokes
were given with mechanical regularity, the pride of the custodian who
operated the bell being to produce the effect of a clock-work bell such as
he had once heard in the court-house at Rouen; but the fifth and sixth
strokes were halting achievements, as, after four o'clock, he often lost
count on the strain of the effort for precise imitation.
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