Janet kneeled beside the stream, and touched a pale forgotten primrose that grew wistfully near the water's edge. It might happen that he did not know the truth of every bird, beast, and flower, and that they too were immortal as well as humankind. Yet none of these things know the love for God, said the preacher. Here on the hill the solemn sheep slept alongside of one another in the chill nights, the mother protected her young ones from the stealthy fox who steals in the shadow of the hedge-even the tall trees drew together in the evening for comfort's sake. The preacher spoke truth indeed, but with never a word of the lovable things that clung about the heart. It was best to follow these righteous words though it seemed that the road to Heaven was a hard long road, and there were many who fell by the way and perished for their sins. Maybe it would change her, and sorrow would come her way and joy also for that matter, but if she held an everlasting faith in God who is the Father of us all, in the end she would know peace and the sight of Heaven itself. And now she was to become a woman, and step onto the threshold of a new life, so the preacher had told her.
In Plyn it was needful to run at another's bidding, and from morn till night there were the cares and necessities of household work-helping here, helping there, encouraging those around you with a kindly word, and sinful it was to expect one in return. There was a freedom here belonging not to Plyn, a freedom that was part of the air and the sea like the glad tossing of the leaves in autumn, and the shy fluttering wings of a bird. Here on the hilltop was no mist, no place of shadows, but the warm comfort of the noonday sun. The white mist buried the cares and doubts of daily life, and with them all vexatious duties and the dull ways of natural folk. It seemed to Janet that this hillside was her own world, a small planet of strange clarity and understanding where all troublous thoughts and queer wonderings of the heart became soothed and at rest. For one instant a gull hovered in the air, stretching his wide wings to the sun, then cried suddenly and dived, losing itself in the mist below. No straggling cloud, no hollow wind broke the calm beauty of the still white sky. The tide was ebbing, the quiet waters escaped silently from the harbor and became one with the sea, unruffled and undisturbed.
It clung to Plyn like a thin pale blanket, lending to the place a faint whisper of unreality as if the whole had been blessed by the touch of ghostly fingers. Although the sun was already high in the heavens, the little town was still wrapped in an early morning mist. Janet Coombe stood on the hill above Plyn, looking down upon the harbor.
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