A shaft of sunbeams penetrating a crevice fell on the white neck of
a yellow collie that lay on the ground with his head on his paws, his eyes
fixed reproachfully on the heels of the horse outside, his ears turned back
toward his master. Beside him a box had been kicked over: tools and shoes
scattered. A faint line of blue smoke sagged from the dying coals of the
forge toward the door, creeping across the anvil bright as if tipped with
silver. And in one of the darkest corners of the shop, near a bucket of
water in which floated a huge brown gourd, Peter and John sat on a bench
while the story of O'Bannon's mischief-making was begun and finished. It was
told by Peter with much cordial rubbing of his elbows in the palms of his
hands and much light-hearted smoothing of his apron over his knees. At times
a cloud, passing beneath the sun, threw the shop into heavier shadow; and
then the school-master's dark figure faded into the tone of the sooty wall
behind him and only his face, with the contrast of its white linen collar
below and the bare discernible lights of his auburn hair above--his face,
proud, resolute, astounded, pallid, suffering--started out of the gloom like
a portrait from an old canvas.
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