Page:Cornelia Meigs--The windy hill.djvu/216

210 length of the winding stream, the scattered house-tops, and the wide green of those gardenlike stretches that still lay, safe and serene, ripening their grain beside the river. The Beeman's eyes moved up and down the valley, resting longest upon the slope opposite, where the yellow farmhouse stood at the edge of its grove of trees and showed its wide gray roof, its white thread of pathway leading up to the door, its row of broad windows that were beginning to flash and shine under the touch of the level rays of the sun.

"Poor Anthony," he said slowly at last, "to be banished from a place he loved so much. And yet a person thinks it a little thing when he first confuses right with wrong!"

He drew a long breath and then turned to the girls with his old cheery smile.

"A story?" he repeated. "It will not be like the others, a tale from old dusty chronicles of Medford Valley, to tell you things that you should know. We have lived the last chapter of that tale and now we will go on to something new."

Oliver leaned back luxuriously in the grass, to stare up at the clear sky and the dark outline of the oak tree, clear-cut against the blue. Its heavy branches were just stirring in the unfailing breeze that blew in from the sea, and its rustling mingled sleepily with the Beeman's voice as he began:

"Once upon a time"