It was July.  When Philip went to sleep at night—­he was in the front chamber reserved for guests—­the loud murmur of the Deerfield was in his ears, like a current bearing him away into sweet sleep and dreams in a land of pleasant adventures.  Only in youth come such dreams.  Later on the sophisticated mind, left to its own guidance in the night, wanders amid the complexities of life, calling up in confusion scenes long forgotten or repented of, images only registered by a sub-conscious process, dreams to perplex, irritate, and excite.

In the morning the same continuous murmur seemed to awake him into a peaceful world.  Through the open window came in the scents of summer, the freshness of a new day.  How sweet and light was the air!  It was indeed the height of summer.  The corn, not yet tasseled, stood in green flexible ranks, moved by the early breeze.  In the river-meadows haying had just begun.  Fields of timothy and clover, yellowing to ripeness, took on a fresh bloom from the dew, and there was an odor of new-mown grass from the sections where the scythes had been.  He heard the call of the crow from the hill, the melody of the bobolink along the meadow-brook; indeed, the birds of all sorts were astir, skimming along the ground or rising to the sky, keeping watch especially over the garden and the fruit-trees, carrying food to their nests, or teaching their young broods to fly and to chirp the songs of summer.  And from the woodshed the shrill note of the scythe under the action of the grindstone.  No such vivid realization of summer as that.

Philip stole out the unused front door without disturbing the family.  Whither?  Where would a boy be likely to go the first thing?  To the barn, the great cavernous barn, its huge doors now wide open, the stalls vacant, the mows empty, the sunlight sifting in through the high shadowy spaces.  How much his life had been in that barn!  How he had stifled and scrambled mowing hay in those lofts!  On the floor he had hulled heaps of corn, thrashed oats with a flail—­a noble occupation—­and many a rainy day had played there with girls and boys who could not now exactly describe the games or well recall what exciting fun they were.  There were the racks where he put the fodder for cattle and horses, and there was the cutting-machine for the hay and straw and for slicing the frozen turnips on cold winter mornings.

In the barn-yard were the hens, just as usual, walking with measured step, scratching and picking in the muck, darting suddenly to one side with an elevated wing, clucking, chattering, jabbering endlessly about nothing.  They did not seem to mind him as he stood in the open door.  But the rooster, in his oriental iridescent plumage, jumped upon a fence-post and crowed defiantly, in warning that this was his preserve.  They seemed like the same hens, yet Philip knew they were all strangers; all the hens and flaunting roosters he knew had long ago gone to Thanksgiving.  The