The bell at St Lucy rang each summer morning shortly after dawn, sounding across the cool dew of the fields, itself cool and clear with repose, and then, as Regina said, the Brothers put on their white robes and walked into the church to pray, all chanting together. The morning star was great and bright, shining down in the east near the place where the sun would rise, sometimes seen as if it were a little moon, plainly crescented. Ellen arose one morning before the first red of the dawn to see to a turmoil among the hens. Hurrying out into the yard she found a skunk among the chicken coops trying to force a way to the chickens, a great clatter arising. Off in the east a brilliant star burned, delicately crescent-formed, the morning star. She thought that it would be necessary to nail the chicken boxes securely before another night and she waited about in the cool dawn to see that the beast did not return. The morning star, whatever its name might be called, hung with softening brilliance as the dawn grew, and she thought of the dark of the moon and of the autumnal equinox, that strange saying. It was hard to bring the autumnal equinox into the same thought with the morning star, the last seen clearly in the sky while the other was something to remember, the days and the nights of equal length and the summer passing. A deep voice held the saying, Kent’s voice as he sat beside the house door, ‘Autumnal equinox comes a Friday after next.’ A cool breeze sprang up from the low-lying space toward the corn field and a shiver passed over her body. A deep voice held the saying or spoke again out of the hill, rolling out a great blast of oaths, admonishing the mules, bearing down the ploughing team, getting the lazy mule along beside the tired old mother. The morning star stood high above the sunrise, pale now. The Brothers would put on their white robes and walk into the church in the morning quietness of the bell, in the fresh stillness of the new dawn, indifferent to the autumnal equinox and the days and nights grown even, and there would be no knowledge among them of the stubborn beasts upon which one cried with storms of words and oaths, and no knowledge of the crying hens, afraid of the skunk, of herself standing guard in the cool dawn. No knowledge of herself holding in mind a voice, ‘autumnal equinox’, ‘morning star’, and the great words rolled out upon the lagging beasts. The corn in the garden stood high and about it clung the beans, all inclined toward the wonder of the sun but belonging to their own hunger and to their labour in the furrows, all grown out of the soil and the rain and the seeds, but turned toward the wonder of the equinoxes, toward the light moon and toward the morning star.