There was cause for happiness, as human happiness goes.
A slim girl bearing in her hand a wooden pail came through the gate of the palisade.

She was bare-headed, but her wonderful dark-brown hair coiled in a shining mass was touched here and there with golden gleams where the sunshine fell upon it.

Her face, browned somewhat, was yet very white on the forehead, and the cheeks had the crimson flush of health.

She wore a dress of homemade linsey dyed red, and its close fit suggested the curves of her supple, splendid young figure.

She walked with strong elastic step toward the spring that gushed from a hillside, and which after a short course fell into the little river.
It was Lucy Upton, grown much taller now, as youth develops rapidly on the border, a creature nourished into physical perfection first by the good blood that was in her, then developed in the open air, and by work, neither too little nor too much.
She reached the spring, and setting the pail by its side looked down at the cool, gushing stream.