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TO THE LIGHTHOUSEone for a year, or the better part of one; and thenDavie Macdonald, and seeds might be sent, but whoshould say if they were ever planted? They'd find itchanged.

She watched her son scything. He was a great onefor work—one of those quiet ones. Well they mustbe getting along with the cupboards, she supposed.They hauled themselves up.

At last, after days of labour within, of cutting anddigging without, dusters were flicked from thewindows, the windows were shut to, keys wereturned all over the house; the front door wasbanged; it was finished.

And now as if the cleaning and the scrubbing andthe scything and the mowing had drowned it thererose that half-heard melody, that intermittent musicwhich the ear half catches but lets fall; a bark, ableat; irregular, intermittent, yet somehow related;the hum of an insect, the tremor of cut grass, dis-severed yet somehow belonging; the jar of a dor-beetle, the squeak of a wheel, loud, low, but mysteri-ously related; which the ear strains to bring to-gether and is always on the verge of harmonising,but they are never quite heard, never fully harmon-ised, and at last, in the evening, one after anotherthe sounds die out, and the harmony falters, andsilence falls. With the sunset sharpness was lost, and212