"Hope," said Leland gravely, "is a little like the germ in the wheat. It lies dormant; but, while its husk lasts, it will not die. I think," and he glanced back at the vast sweep of sprouting green, "I was like that dusty ploughing, waiting for the rain."
The girl was silent for a while, though she, too, was conscious of a curious stirring of her nature, which showed itself by the warmth in her cheeks. The man had, she felt, chosen a peculiarly fitting symbolism, for, when the beneficent rain had touched the arid clods, they had put on beauty with sudden life and growth.
"And what do you expect, then?" she asked.
Leland smiled. "I don't quite know, but it must be something good and beautiful. What is in all Nature is in us too. My dear," and he made a little gesture, "one can feel, and not quite understand. The wheat yonder doesn't know why and how it grows, but, since you gave me your promise at Barrock-holme, I have been waiting for something to come to me."
"Ah," said Carrie again, "after what has happened, you can expect it still?"
The man looked at her gravely. "Hope is indestructible, and some day the rain will come. One cannot hurry it, one can only work and wait."
Carrie smiled a little, though once more pride and a curious tenderness struggled within her.
"Well," she said, "in the meantime, Jake is no doubt wondering whether we are coming in to breakfast."
They turned, and went back to the house, with the sunshine bright upon them, and the clean scents of the soil in their nostrils. The gladness that was in all things reacted upon them both.
Half an hour later, Leland set about his work again, and, as he had leagues to ride to visit one or two farms, and to see where there was likely to be any wild hay in the sloos, dusk was closing down before he came back again. In his absence, something had happened that left Carrie confused and startled. The men were trooping in for the six o'clock supper, when a light waggon swung into sight over the crest of the rise. As it reached the door of the homestead, one of the two men in it sprang down. Carrie was standing in the entrance hall when Jake showed him in, and she caught her breath with a little gasp when she saw who it was. The man who stood smiling at her with the sunlight on his face was the one she had parted from on the path above the ravine at Barrock-holme.