Slowly, overcome by that silent, restful idleness, I fell a-dreaming; and that path, that long, white path seemed to me to have become a part of my own being, something like a life that began over there, far away yonder in the clear blue, to end in the unknown, here, behind the gable-end, cut off at that fatal bend.
After long looking, I saw something, very far off; it came so slowly, so softly, like a thing that grows, and those two little black patches grew into two romping schoolboys, who, rolling and leaping along, came running down the white sand-path and, at last, disappeared in the bend behind the gable-end.
Then, for another long while, nothing more, nothing but sand, green and sunshine.
Later, ‘twas three labourers, who came stepping up briskly, with their gear over their shoulders. Half-way up the path, they jumped across the ditch and went to work in the field. They toiled on, without looking up or round, toiled on till I got tired of watching and tired of those three stooping men and of seeing that gleaming steel flicker in the sun and go in and out of the earth.
When now ‘twas mid-day and fiercely hot in my loft, my three labourers sat down behind a tree and ate their noonday meal.
I went to the loft-door and devoured my second crust of bread and took a fresh gulp of water.
Very calmly, without thinking, lame with the heat and with that old-man’s feeling still inside me, I went and sat at the window.
The three men worked on, always, without stopping.
And that went on, went on, until the evening! When ‘twas nearly dark, they gathered up their tools, jumped over the ditch, walked down the path the way they had come and disappeared behind the gable-end.
Now it became deadly.