However, he knew that he could start his train of
thought again, and again ascend the mountain.
Floating through the fog into his open window came the noises of the
village as it set about living another day, precisely as it had lived
innumerable days in the past. The blast of the six-o'clock whistle from
the planing-mill made the loose sashes of his windows rattle. Came a
lowing of cows and a clucking of hens, a woman's calling. The voices of
men in conversation came so distinctly through the pall that it seemed a
number of persons must be moving about their morning work, talking and
shouting, right in the Renfrew yard.
But the thing that impressed Peter most was the solidity and stability
of this Southern village that he could hear moving around him, and its
certainty to go on in the future precisely as it had gone on in the
past. It was a tremendous force. The very old manor about him seemed
huge and intrenched in long traditions, while he, Peter Siner, was just
a brown man, naked behind a screen and rather cold from the fog and damp
of the morning.
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