"Where's your traäde to?" asked the mother.
"Jim's bringin' it down. I believe he's out in the kitchen now. I'll go and see."
As she went from the room Mrs. Rosevear sank into the nearest chair. "I'm glad you'm back, S'bina. I bin so whisht without 'ee. Not a soul to speak to besides Tom and you can't tell a man very much."
"No, they don't understand." Her thoughts wandered for a moment. Leadville had been strange in his manner but of course it was only that he did not understand.
"Now you've seen Jim," continued Mrs. Rosevear, "what do you think of him?"
Sabina roused herself. "I call 'ee a proper chap," she said smilingly. "Lovely curly 'air he 'as."
"Yes," confided the mother, "and Gray's as maäze as a rattle about 'im."
Mrs. Tom's confidences made Sabina feel as if she had a share in the other's happy motherhood. They sat gossiping until the shadows began to fill the valley. Jim was a long time on his way with Gray's box—but to every man and woman their hour!
Leadville, on leaving the house, had turned his face towards the cliff. Beyond its dark wall was space and light. He took the little path that led over the head, passed the deep curves of what in prehistoric times had been the earthworks of a stockaded hold and came out upon a broad shelf of rock. The tide was in, large green waves were rolling, with a break like gunfire, into the caves below, and, facing him, was one of the strange sunsets often seen on that coast. The western sky was scarlet and across the light was a trail of black clouds.
"A red sky at night, is the shepherd's delight," muttered the man, flinging himself down above the booming uproar of the water. Below, the shags were nesting on inaccessible ledges and a solitary seal was diving through the crests of the green rollers. Byron felt unusually, inexplicably cheerful. The glories of the sunset were in keeping with his mood, a mood, as he realized, of the incoming tide. On his shelf of rock he lay in a happy dream. Hitherto he had loved nothing but a few acres of land; he had hungered after fields and rocks, had dragged out a dark existence of craving and disappointment. Now his tormented spirit was at peace. The wide expanse of heaven changed from scarlet to poppy-red, the raven clouds grew more numerous and Leadville looked on with happy eyes. In his breast was a ferment, like the unresting ferment of the sea, but neither cold nor lifeless. A wind was blowing steadily from the west, but he did not feel it for he was warm. His spirit, with its capacity for intense feeling, had crossed a boundary line, beyond which was neither heat nor cold, hunger nor thirst. He had loved Wastralls, now he was in the power of a force stronger than that love, of a force the strongest in the world.