XI.
Though he was ill and in pain,in disobedience to the instruction he would have received if he had asked,
the old man got up from his bed, dressed, and went to the barn. The bare branches of winter had emerged through the last leaf-colors of fall, the loveliest of all, browns and yellows delicate and nameless in the gray light and the sifting rain. He put feed in the troughs for eighteen ewe lambs, sent the dog for them, and she brought them. They came eager to their feed, and he who felt their hunger was by their feeding eased. From no place in the time of present places, within no boundary nameable in human thought, they had gathered once again, the shepherd, his sheep, and his dog with all the known and the unknown round about to the heavens’ limit. Was this his stubbornness or bravado? No. Only an ordinary act of profoundest intimacy in a day that might have been better. Still the world persisted in its beauty, he in his gratitude, and for this he had most earnestly prayed.
