A week later Ishmael arrived back at Cloom. As he walked along on the
first evening after his return the feel of the country smote him as
never before. Ecstasy welled in him, clear and living; the strong, pure
air made him want to shout with joy. And more than the sight of the
swelling land, more than the feel of the springy turf beneath his feet,
or the wind on his eyelids, it was the smell of the country that woke in
him this ecstasy. Sweet as the breath of cows came its mingled fragrance
of grass and earth and of the fine dust on the roadway, of the
bitter-sweet tang of the bracken and faint aftermath of hay; the breath
at his nostrils was drunken with sweet odour. He had come back to face
Archelaus, it was true, but he came back a man.

It was a good world, and he would make his corner of it still better....
How splendid it was to be alive and tingling with the knowledge that
everything lay before one! Pain and sorrow were only words that fell
away into nothingness before the joy of merely living....

So he felt as, late that night, he leant upon his window sill and stared
out at the darkness that was the background for his imagings of what was
to come. Upon his thoughts there broke the chattering scream of a rabbit
caught by a stoat, tearing the velvet tissues of the night's silence. On
and on it kept, always on one high note, with a horrible persistence.
Ishmael listened, sorry that even a rabbit should suffer on this night
of nights, and was glad when the screaming wavered and died into a
merciful stillness. As he dropped asleep the sardonic laughing bark of a
full-fed fox came echoing from the earn.