Page:Pontoppidan - Emanuel, or Children of the Soil (1896).djvu/266

 "Not a creature to be seen yet," she said to her mother, while the only bitter feeling in her heart, namely, the righteous hatred of the Skibberup people towards the Provst, shone out of her beautiful dark blue eyes.

Emanuel went into the cow-byre dressed in a long belted sacking smock and pair of wooden shoes.

It was the first time he had fed the cattle by himself, and he felt rather nervous about it, but he weighed and measured out the portions with the greatest exactitude, and mixed the bran mashes, and, lastly, gave each cow a truss of barley straw.

His work soon made him warm, and he felt, after he had successfully accomplished it, that delightful sense of satisfaction which only bodily labour gives. Even after these few days of work he could feel his muscles developing and the blood coursing quicker through his veins. Why had he not long, long ago realized the old saying, "the sanctity of labour!" he asked himself daily.

His next labour was to clean out the cow-byre and wheel away the sweepings to the manure heap, the sweat streaming down his face. He felt the need of occupying himself with the hardest and dirtiest work he could find, to prove to himself that he had freed himself from the trammels of the past, and did not consider his hands too good for any work however lowly.