She had toiled all the summer out of doors with her husband to make their home, timber-cutting with him, grubbing stumps from the land, laying twigs and leaves in the stumps and lighting them so that the slow fires eating the wood left only charred shells to clear away. She had driven Lassie, the grey, backwards and forwards, drawing logs and tree trunks from the slope to the stack behind the house, and when the frames of the wagon shed, cow sheds and stable were up, had laced the brushwood to them. The weedy, brown nag that was Lassie's trace mate, during those first weeks in the hills had come down and got himself rather badly staked, and Donald had had to shoot him. It cost him a good deal to fire that shot, but he had worked the harder for it.
Mary watched the cow while she browsed on the edge of the forest before a paddock on the top of the hill was fenced. She milked, fed the calf and the fowls, and carried water from the creek to the house. When she was not doing any of these things, or baking, brushing or furbishing indoors, during those first few months, her fingers were busy with little garments—shirts and gowns and overalls—cut from her own clothes of homespun tweed and unbleached calico.
It was at the end of a long golden day that a cry from her brought Donald from the far edge of the clearing. He was turning the land for his first crop, and when he heard that cry, left the mare in her tracks, the rope lines trailing beside her.
Later, his hands trembling, he took Lassie from the plough, and led her to the creek for water. Then, although the sun had not set, he hobbled her for the night, went into the house and shut the door.
Usually, all was silent within its walls when the darkness fell; but this night a garish light flickered under the door. There were sounds of hushed movement, faint moaning, the crackling of fire on the hearth, all night. The dog lying on the mat by the door did not know what to make of it. He growled, low and warningly now and then. Towards morning while stars still sparkled over the dark wave of the forest, a faintly wailing cry came from the hut. The dog's ears twitched; his yelping had an eerie note.
Sunlight was flooding the hills, illumining the forest greenery, making crimson and gold of the shoots on the saplings, banishing the mists among the trees, splashing in long shafts on the sward, wet with dew, when Donald Cameron opened the door. His arms were folded round a shawled bundle. He stood for a moment in the doorway, the sunlight beating past him into the hut.
Then he lifted the small body in his arms, kissed it, and held it out to the dawn, his face wrung with emotion.
"All this, yours—your world, my son!" he said.
They were quiet days that followed, days spun off in lengths of sunshine from the looms of Time, with the sleepy warmth of the end of the summer and the musky odours of the forest in them. Mary worked less out of doors when she was about again; her hands were full, cooking, washing and sewing, and looking after the animals and the baby. She sang to him as she worked. All her joy and tenderness were centred in him now.
Donald did not understand the love songs she sang to little Davey. They were always in her own Welsh tongue.