The long lazy days on the farm had begun.
From the mountain side the farm looked down on a wide sweeping valley of
woods and fields. The old house straggled along the road, with addition
after addition built on through generations by many men and women. Here lay
the history, unread, of the family of Roger Gale. Inside there were steps
up and down from one part to another, queer crooks in narrow passageways.
The lower end was attached to the woodshed, and the woodshed to the barn.
Above the house a pasture dotted with gray boulders extended up to a wood
of firs, and out of this wood the small river which bore the name of the
family came rushing down the field in a gully, went under the road, swept
around to the right and along the edge of a birch copse just below the
house. The little stream grew quieter there and widened into a mill pond.
At the lower end was a broken dam and beside it a dismantled mill. Here was
peace for Roger's soul. The next day at dawn he awakened, and through the
window close by his bed he saw no tall confining walls; his eye was carried
as on wings out over a billowy blanket of mist, soft and white and cool and
still, reaching over the valley. From underneath to his sensitive ears came
the numberless voices of the awakening sleepers there, cheeps and tremulous
warbles from the birch copse just below, cocks crowing in the valley, and
ducks and geese, dogs, sheep and cattle faintly heard from distant farms.
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