Always there had been something absolute about the Abbot's No and Yes. I took hope.
"Is it thin enough to pasture?"
"The main piece is. Better come and see."
A pair of rubber boots in the corner of the Chapel caught my eye and the wan light of March outside.
"There's everything there—a virgin beech wood—a few acres of second-growth stuff that has all the vines and trailers—then the stream and the big hollow where the cattle move up and down."
"Did you have anything to do with keeping it unspoiled?" I asked.
"My father didn't intend to cut anything right away. He might have thinned the pasture section a little. I asked him not to. When he saw the way I felt about it, he said he would never cut it."
There was a healing in that never.... The Abbot was not the kind to ask his father for unreasonable things. I had seen the two together, and had studied their relation with some pleasure. In the main, the father had merely to understand, to be at one with the boy.... It happened that we were alone in the Chapel at that time. I reached for the rubber-boots.
"I'll ride as far as town and put the horse up," said I. "Meet me at the far-end in a half-hour and we'll start the hike from there."
He was off at once. Chillness was still in the air, the land grey, clouds yellowish-grey and watery.