On a rush mat in the sunshine the old hound flicked his long black ear at a fly of which he was dreaming, and from a bower of ivy in the eaves there came the twitter of sparrows.

Beyond the orchard, the wind, blowing from the marshes, chased the thin, sketchy shadows over the lawn at Jordan's Journey.
While he sat there Reuben began to think, and as always, his thoughts were humble and without self-consciousness.

As he looked under the gnarled boughs of the orchard, he seemed to see his whole life stretching before him--seventy years--all just the same except that with each he appeared a little older, a little humbler, a little less expectant that some miracle might happen and change the future.

At the end of that long vista, he saw himself young and strong, and filled with a great hope for something--he hardly knew what--that would make things different.

He had gone on, still hoping, year by year, and now at the end, he was an old, bent, crippled man, and the miracle had never happened.