"When the shadows
gather all together, and melt into one, then it is night. Look how the
light creeps about the roots of the grass on the ridge, as if it were
looking for something between the shadows. They are both going to die.
Now they begin."
The sun diminished to a star--a spark of crimson fire, and vanished. As
if he had sunk in a pool of air, and made it overflow, a gentle ripple
of wind blew from the sunset over the grass. They could see the grass
bending and swaying and bathing in its coolness before it came to them.
It blew on their faces at length, and whispered something they could
not understand, making Kate think of her mother, and Alec of Kate.
Now that same breeze blew upon Tibbie and Annie, as they sat in the
patch of meadow by the cottage, between the river and the _litster's
dam_. It made Tibbie think of death, the opener of sleeping eyes, the
uplifter of hanging hands. For Tibbie's darkness was the shadow of her
grave, on the further border of which the light was breaking in music.
Death and resurrection were the same thing to blind old Tibbie.
When the gentle, washing wind blew upon Annie, she thought of the wind
that bloweth were it listeth; and that, if ever the Spirit of God blew
upon her, she would feel it just like that wind of summer sunset--so
cool, so blessed, so gentle, so living! And was it not God that
breathed that wind upon her? Was he not even then breathing his Spirit
into the soul of that woman-child?
It blew upon Andrew Constable, as he stood in his shop-door, the easy
labour of his day all but over.
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