God's Green Country

ut there is one fundamental agent of his greatness

particular afternoon. Billy found the rest of the cows waiting at the bars, lowing to be milked after a day on the heavy spring pasture. I

ocks and thorns and hazel bushes made strange hiding places. If she wasn't there he would have to inspect the fence into the neighbor's woods. The pasture was rough and thickety, but he knew every foot of the

ad bush topping the ridge of piled up stones was trampled and broken. The high-strung little heifer had taken a dangerous climb to find a sanctuary worthy of her great moment. Beyond the break in the fence there wasn't a clue to the direction she had taken-not

Billy came up. Besides, he had spent the afternoon in a rather no

red them now with a feeling of guilt. At the same time his quick senses observed the quietness of the pigs in the pen, the horses crunc

, just git right back and stay till you do find her. Never mind about your mother callin' you. You ain't dealin' with your

in strange, mad little curses. At the edge of the woods the feeling began to cool in a new sensation. Billy wouldn't have admitted what it was, but the place was so still and dark and far away from everywhere, that the breaking of a dry twig under his feet set his pulses beating wildly. There were weird stories afloat in

nd a hundred tree trunks. He didn't move till they had finished. Once he stumbled against a rotten log, and a cat leaped almost from under his feet and shot in long lopes off into the bracken. Instinctively Billy broke off a dead limb-he had heard of ugly encounters with bush cats in the hungry season, and the conscious

n his brain seemed to click, revealing for an instant an old picture, as though this experience had happened to him before somewhere. Was the thing "getting" him as he had seen it get others? With a new terror in his drawn face he put his hand to his head and whispered, "Oh, God, not that!" Then over his bleared consciousness ca

able by such a love, and the bitterest t

back to their holes-and right beside him a crackling of dead underbrush, the sound of a short, quick trot, a low bellow either o

f competence. He advanced steadily, ready to dart behind a tree if the cow showed any real sign of attack, calmly enough repeating, "Steady, Dolly; so, Boss." Evidently the cow recognized and trusted him; he had petted her all her life; also he was not coming near her calf. She had hidden it in a spot quite safe from intrusion. Sure of that she was not averse to being fr

was nearly midnight and Billy found himself stumbling over t

terly. "Soon's I'm big enough to get away i

twinge under it. Her patience was teaching him early to overcome the selfishness of youth. He knew that always hers was the greater suffering, but she never complained; so a bit s

find one somehow. Maybe your father'll see things differently after a while. I think that'll be a fine ca

have been gooder'n gold to it at home. It was just a chance that we found her at all

always tried to hide her nest. She also told him of whatever beautiful things she knew to look and listen for in the woods at night, simple, wonderful lore that her father had given her on their walks through

of her, and if it didn't seem enough, if she had visions, mysterious inward stirrings of something creative crying for expression, she generally kept them to herself. At last she suggested it timidly-she wanted to go to school, she wanted to do something. She didn't know just what. How could she when she had never had a chance to see what there was to be done? But her father had laughed and petted her and said

ing up every year, a menace to the social life and economic purpose of the flock. They seemed to think she wanted to "go into the world" for the mere joy of adventure or the hope of notoriety, either of wh

just what she had been waiting for. She wasn't introspective, and she didn't stop to analyze this feeling, of course. Apart from the tumultuous sway of it there were secret visions which she would not for worlds have revealed to anyone, but which brought her the only reassur

single-handed and against odds, to give the children a chance. What if, in the fight ahead of her, she should go out as she had seen several of her neighbors go, coming up to the battle spent and