Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/262

238 the marauding cut-throats of a Norman baron; and he would have looked close for great stones half-bedded in the moss, lasting monuments to the weird and bloody rites of some stern Druid colony long dead; and then glanced up sharply to see if that patch of thicker green in the deeper woods were not indeed the coat of some gallant outlaw whose bosom was English, and who stood ready with his yew bow and his cloth-yard shaft to join the huge Saxon in his stubborn fight against the bloody followers of Duke William of Normandy; and when the herd had wandered by one would have leaned over in the road to see if there was not a brass collar soldered fast around the neck of the happy cowherd, graven in Saxon letters with this inscription: “Zaak, the son of Jonas, is thrall to Rufus of Alshire.”

The cheery sunshine under the dear arch of blue, with its homely noises of awakening life and its cool breath, ladened with the fresh odor wafted from meadows of clover springing up with sweet new blossom after the harvest, all so conducive to careless, joyous existence,