noon
As he spoke Pan pocketed his long knife , picked up his stick and bundle , and began to pad away through the trees down towards the spring , with me at his shoulder , and for the first time he held my hand in his as I followed in my usual squaw style . In all the long dreary weeks that followed I was glad that I had had that dinner at sunset and moonrise with him down in the cove at the spring that was away from all the world . All during the days that never seemed to end , as I went upon my round of duties , I put the ache of the memories of it from me , but in the night I took the agony into my heart and cherished it . `` And it 's the Romney hand ye have with the herb-pot , Woman dear , '' said Adam as he squatted down beside our simmering pot and stirred it with the clean hickory stick I had barked for that purpose when , very shortly after high noon , I had put the greens , with the two wild onion sprigs and the handful of inevitable black-walnut kernels , into the iron pot set on the two rocks with their smoldering green fire between . `` You know you 'd rather be eating this dinner of sprouts and black bread with your poor Adam than -- than dancing that ` Cloud Drift ' in town with Matthew Berry -- or Baldwin the enemy . '' `` Yes , '' I answered , as I knelt beside him and thrust in another slim stick and tasted the juice of the pot off the end . `` But it would be hard to make Matthew believe it .