Peter passed a few days cutting down the trees round the school-cottage. He made a clearing where the sun could look through, and he dug a flower-bed under the window. Soon after day-break each morning, he left the mill, swung up the village street past the church and entered the forest. He spent many hours there, his eyes and ears alert to all the wondrous life going on in the sweet green shade. Hares and rabbits, water-rats and weasels scurried away before his approaching footsteps, then stopped to look at him from a fern, or a tree-trunk, or a moss-grown stone. Squirrels leaped among the boughs overhead, and threw empty nuts down, and birds, less shy, and more mercenary, scavenged in the drifts of last year's leaves, not heeding him at all. Often he passed many hours with Timothy Hadwin, discoursing of things, that lie at the roots of human development. He laughingly said that he was always ready for an excuse to fling himself upon the warm, sweet-smelling earth, and look at the sky, which hung over the tree-tops like a blue china cup. But he was not idle. He read books of Theology and books on Philosophy in the little white-washed parlour of the school-house. He read sincerely, even with ardour, but ever came to the same conclusion that the priesthood was not his vocation.
Made restless and impatient by unavailing study, he at length flung his books aside, turned to the free breezy life of the fells, and went fishing. Swirtle Tarn, and all the mountain streams, saw his grey clad figure through the dusks of early morning and night. Neither rain nor heat could keep him at home. He was out from sunrise to sunset, his skin burnt brown as an Autumn leaf, and his hair bleached to the colour of wind-blown bent.
Sometimes he saw Barbara, her figure outlined against the sky; or he spied her climbing like a goat up the gaunt face of Thundergay; or he caught the light glancing from her reaping hook as she cut bracken for the cows' winter bedding; and once, when the sun was level with the hills, a giant shadow of horse and woman fell upon him, and she passed close by, leading home the peats.
Peter did not often have speech with Barbara. He did not seek her, for his mind was preoccupied with his own concerns, and she did not cross his path. He saw Lucy much oftener, but he was too open and honest to imagine that their frequent meetings were planned by the brain that lay behind such blue and innocent eyes.
Thus the summer died upon the hills.
Harvesting, stacking turf, and bringing sheep from the highest pastures made the "back end" busy for the fell folk. A spirit of good fellowship inspired them, and they helped each other, gathering first at this farm, then at that, toiling through the heat of the day and feasting at night; dancing the harvest moon up into the sky, or out of it—as the case might be. No lack of willing workers came to Greystones, and Mistress Lynn indulged her pent-up generosity on this occasion, providing liberal ale, bread, and cheese for her guests.
On the night of the kern supper, the harvesters brought home the kern baby in triumph to Greystones. The kern baby was made of the last cut of corn, platted into some semblance of the human figure, its head stuffed with a red apple. They hung it up on the kitchen wall, near the four-poster, where it would remain until the end of the year, when the best cow would get the corn and Jan Straw the apple.
For half a century the kern apple had been Jan's meed on Christmas morning. He took it to the kirk-garth, and laid it on the grave of "her o' the white fingers." During the night some wild creature came out of the forest and ate it up, but he never knew, for the churchyard was too holy a place to be disturbed by many pilgrimages. He had an idea that the apples were all garnered up somewhere, watched over by an angel, and that he would find them again, hereafter, in a golden heap.
The weather continued summerlike; the bracken grew taller and taller in the moister places of the dale until it stood as high as Lucy's shoulder.
"We'll have to pay for this by and by," said Mistress Lynn.