Master of the Vineyard

The girl paused among the birches and drew a long breath of relief. It was good to beoutdoors after the countless annoyances of the day; to feel the earth springing beneath herstep, the keen, crisp air bringing the colour to her cheeks, and the silence of the woodsministering to her soul. From the top of the hill she surveyed her little world. Where the small white housesclustered in the valley, far below her, she had spent her five-and-twenty years, shut in bythe hills, and, more surely, by the iron bars of circumstance. To her the heights had alwaysmeant escape, for in the upper air and in solitude she found detachment-a sort ofheavenly perspective upon the affairs of the common day. Down in the bare, brown valley the river lay asleep.