He was hard-worked at the farm: twenty-nine cow-beasts, which were always hungry and always wanted fattening; furthermore, a whole herd of calves and hogs: ‘twas a drudging without end or bottom, from early morning to late at night, until his limbs hung lame.
The farmer was good but strict and could not abide sluggards; he looked for work, hard work; and this the lad was glad to give, but only while looking forward to the everlasting Sunday, in which lay all his happiness and cheer.
He quickened his steps; and the elms pushed by, one by one, and at last, ahead, very far down that dark hedge of stems and leafage, came a tiny opening where the trees seemed to touch one another.
Look! There, beside the little village church, stood Farmer Willems’ homestead, with its little slate turret and the great poplars and, beside it, close together and quite hidden in the green, two little cottages. ‘Twas there that he was brought up and had grown up; there, in one of those cottages. In the other lived Stafke’s father and mother. The children had led the half-wild life of the country there: two little boys together. They had clambered up those mighty trees, weltered in the sand of the drove and coursed like foals in the meadow. The farm was a free domain to them; they were at home in it; they went daily to the little door of the wash-house to fetch their slice of rye-bread-and-butter and, in the morning, an apple or a pear. They had lain and rolled in the hay-loft, like fish in the water; but all that had passed so quickly, so very quickly. The parish-priest came; and, for six months, six long months, they had had to go to school and church. Then, on a certain Monday morning, father said:
“Lad, you’re coming along to the farm to-day, to bind corn.”
Play was over, the free play of the country! They were pressed into labour, were saddled with the labourer’s heavy burden. Since then, it had been an endless roving after work, from one farm to another, with his bundle under his arm.
Stafke had remained serving at Willems’, with father, and he, on Sunday afternoons, had not so far to go, under the burning sun, in order to get home.
The way was long for an unthinking lad; and they seemed endless, those never-changing rows of tree-trunks, those uncounted yellow, blinking cornfields ... and never a creature on the road. It was something very much out of the way when a pigeon flew through the azure sky; the lad stood still and, turning round, followed the great ring which it made until it dropped far away, yonder among the houses of the village. Then he went on, pondering, as he went, that there was nothing, absolutely nothing lovelier than a milk-white pigeon in a pale-blue sky; and he whispered:
“Perhaps it’s Stafke’s pigeon.”
On reaching home, he laid down his bundle; his baby sister came running up to him, with her little arms wide open, and held him by his legs; and he lifted her twice, three times above his head. He handed mother his earnings; and then, out of the door, to Stafke’s!