Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/175

 A crowd of young people, girls and youths, had already started for the rendezvous on the north shore; the girls first, arm in arm, singing, and the youths behind in twos and threes, with lighted pipes and cigars. The elders soon followed, mostly in pairs, labouring up the steep path Avhich led over the sandhills.

A couple of elderly men had joined Emanuel—two brisk little figures of the usual Skibberup type, with long arms and short legs. They were both leading persons, and tried their best to get Emanuel to say what he thought the Provst would say to "this here business," and how he thought he would get on in the future.

But Emanuel constantly turned aside from the subject. He felt the need of rest for his spirit and his thoughts for this evening, and of enjoying these few short hours of happiness, and freedom unalloyed. Besides, he thought the evening far too fine for laying plans of war. It was as if nature herself urged an hour's peace and reconciliation. So he often stopped, and compelled the men to silence by looking around him, with outbursts of delight. The pure harmonious colouring of the sky was reflected in the glowing earth! Not a breath of air, not a sound. Yes! high, high up, under the flaming sky, a little lark, invisible, warbled to the setting sun—one sound in the infinite silence, a single quivering note, distant, and yet,