The red sun showed between the black trunks of the trees. He noticed that all colours were intensified into a sombre brightness. Little rosy mushrooms were rosetted here and there in the lush grass. The orchard fence was smothered in goldenrod.
Between the orchard and the "old orchard" lay a field of potatoes. Old Binns was digging them and laying them in shallow ridges on the black loam. In that long day he had done perhaps a half-day's work. He leaned on his spade and shouted: "Hi! Mr. Whiteoak! Hi!"
Renny stopped.
"Yes?"
"What do you s'pose be here now?"
"What?"
"Blight. Blight be here."
Renny threw up his hand.
"Put down that spade!" he shouted. "No more work here to-day!" He strode on.
No spade should stir the surface of the land she had loved. That land must lie quiet, mourning for her to-day, and to-morrow, and the next day.
Old Binns watched Renny disappear into the glowing density of the old orchard. He was aghast. Never in his life before had he had such an order. He must be going to lose his job! He thrust his spade deep into the soil and turned up three potatoes. Feverishly he thrust and grubbed for the potatoes. Never before had he worked with such vehemence. He kept muttering angrily to himself: "Blight be here, anyhow. Dang him!"
The old orchard, unpruned since a decade, displayed a fantastic exuberance of foliage. The branches of the apple-trees, which later would be weighted with ripe fruit, never to be garnered, swept to the ground. Among them grew clumps of green hazel and sumach, with its rose-red plumes. Creepers of various kinds had caught at the lowest boughs and clambered up them, as though striving to drag the trees themselves to the earth. A discarded mowing machine was hidden beneath a rank growth of wild grapevine, its presence never to be
