Rackby puckered his face, when the square bell tower of the church,
white as chalk, came into view, dazzling against the somber green
upland. The red crown of a maple showed as if a great spoke of the
rising sun had passed across that field and touched the tree to fire
with its brilliant heat.
So he had stood--so he had been touched. His heart beat fast, and now he
stood under the Preaching Tree again, and drew a whiff of warm hay,
clover-spiced, as it went creaking past, a square-topped load, swishing
and dropping fragrant tufts.--This odor haunted him, as if delights
forgotten, only dreamed, or enjoyed in other lives, had drifted past
him.--Then the vivid touch of Cad Sills's lips.
He glanced up, and at once his oars stumbled, and he nearly dropped them
in his fright. For the fraction of a second he had, it seemed, surprised
Cad Sills herself looking at him steadily out of those blue, half-shut
lazy eyes of his scrupulously guarded foster child. The flesh cringed on
his body. Was she lurking there still? Certainly he had felt again, in
that flash, the kiss, the warm tumult of her body, the fingers
dove-tailed across his eyes; and even seen the scented hay draw past
him, toppling and quivering.
He stared more closely at the girl. She looked nothing like the wild
mother.
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