We were two weeks at home with mother and father and Uncle Eb.
It was a delightful season of rest in which Hope and I went over
the sloping roads of Faraway and walked in the fields and saw the
harvesting. She had appointed Christmas Day for our wedding and
I was not to go again to the war, for now my first duty was to my
own people. If God prospered me they were all to come to live
with us in town and, though slow to promise, I could see it gave
them comfort to know we were to be for them ever a staff and
refuge.
And the evening before we came back to town Jed Feary was with
us and Uncle Eb played his flute and sang the songs that had been
the delight of our childhood.
The old poet read these lines written in memory of old times in
Faraway and of Hope's girlhood.
'The red was in the clover an' the blue was in the sky:
There was music in the meadow, there was dancing in the rye;
An' I heard a voice a calling to the flocks o' Faraway
An' its echo in the wooded hills - Go'day! Go'day! Go'day!
O fair was she - my lady love - an' lithe as the willow tree,
An' aye my heart remembers well her parting words t' me.
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