To-day is "so cool, so calm, so bright," that Geoffrey's heart grows glad within him as he walks along the road that leads to the farm, his gun upon his shoulder, his trusty dog at his heels.
All through the air the smell of heather, sweet and fragrant, reigns. Far down, miles away, the waves rush inland, glinting and glistening in the sunlight.
"Blue roll the waters, blue the sky
Spreads like an ocean hung on high."
The birds, as though once more led by the balmy mildness of the day into the belief that summer has not yet forsaken them, are singing in the topmost branches of the trees, from which, with every passing breeze, the leaves fall lightly.
From the cabins pale wreaths of smoke rise slowly, scarce stirred by the passing wind. Going by one of these small tenements, before which the inevitable pig is wallowing in an unsavory pool, a voice comes to him, fresh and joyous, and plainly full of pleasure, that thrills through his whole being. It is to him what no other voice ever has been, or ever can be again. It is Mona's voice!
Again she calls to him from within.
"Is it you?" she says. "Come in here, Geoffrey. I want you."
How sweet it is to be wanted by those we love! Geoffrey, lowering his gun, stoops and enters the lowly cabin (which, to say the truth, is rather uninviting than otherwise) with more alacrity than he would show if asked to enter the queen's palace. Yet what is a palace but the abode of a sovereign? and for the time being, at least, Rodney's sovereign is in possession of this humble dwelling. So it becomes sacred, and almost desirable, in his eyes.
She is sitting before a spinning-wheel, and is deftly drawing the wool through her fingers; brown little fingers they are, but none the less dear in his sight.
"I'm here," she cries, in the glad happy tones that have been ringing their changes in his heart all day.