the
late May noon
A nigger pumping a bellows , probably . No , they could get that from the wheel , '' he drew an explanatory diagram in the blackened dust . With the lunch basket on the running board of the motor they ate sitting on the low boundary wall of the lawn . The heat increased through the late May noon , and Howat remained while Mariana and James Polder wandered in the direction of the orchard . Finally the sun forced the former to move ; and he , too , proceeded in a desultory manner , entering the shade of a grove of old maples . The trees , their earliest red leafage already emerald , followed the dry channel cut back from Canary Creek to the Forge , and he soon emerged at the broad , flashing course of the stream . A flat rock jutted into the hurrying water by an overthrown dam , its sun-heated expanse now in shadow ; and he stayed , listening to the gurgling flow .