1 By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield road.
2 The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun.
3 Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields, mute and cold as a grave-stone.
4 A red sun stood over the grey rim of the fields, behind trees that looked black and brittle.
5 It made a small frightened cheep like a field mouse, and he wondered languidly if it were hurt.
6 A mournful peace hung on the fields, as though they felt the relaxing grasp of the cold and stretched themselves in their long winter sleep.
7 They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with spruce and larch.
8 His unfinished studies had given form to this sensibility and even in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion.
9 It was a slow trudge home through the heavy fields, and when the two men entered the kitchen Mattie was lifting the coffee from the stove and Zeena was already at the table.
10 The sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far-off forest hung like smoke.
11 They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded lane, where Ethan's sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again into the comparative clearness of the fields.
12 When she tried to extend the field of her activities in the direction of stenography and book-keeping her health broke down, and six months on her feet behind the counter of a department store did not tend to restore it.
13 The sweetness of the picture, and the relief of knowing that his fears of "trouble" with Zeena were unfounded, sent up his spirits with a rush, and he, who was usually so silent, whistled and sang aloud as he drove through the snowy fields.
14 Left alone, after his father's accident, to carry the burden of farm and mill, he had had no time for convivial loiterings in the village; and when his mother fell ill the loneliness of the house grew more oppressive than that of the fields.