dences! And there moved in him
a longing to go down and see again the farm and the orchard, and the
meadow of the gipsy bogle. It would not take long; Stella would be an
hour yet, perhaps.

How well he remembered it all--the little crowning group of pine trees,
the steep-up grass hill behind! He paused at the farm gate. The low
stone house, the yew-tree porch, the flowering currants--not changed
a bit; even the old green chair was out there on the grass under the
window, where he had reached up to her that night to take the key. Then
he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the orchard gate-grey
skeleton of a gate, as then. A black pig even was wandering in there
among the trees. Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had
he dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple
tree? Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard and brought
himself back to reality. Opening the gate, he made his way down through
the docks and nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree
itself. Unchanged! A little more of the greygreen lichen, a dead branch
or two, and for the rest it might have been only last night that he had
embraced that mossy trunk after Megan's flight and inhaled its woody
savour, while above his head the moonlit blossom had seemed to breathe
and live. In that early spring a few buds were showing already; the
blackbirds shouting their songs, a cuckoo calling, the sunlight bright
and warm. Incredibly the same-the chattering trout-stream, the narrow
pool he had lain in every morning, splashing the water over his flanks
and chest; and out there in the wild meadow the beech clump and the
stone where the gipsy bogie was supposed to sit. And an ache for lost
youth, a hankering, a sense of wasted love and sweetness, gripped
Ashurst by the throat. Surely, on this earth of such wild beauty, one
was meant to hold rapture to one's heart, as this earth and sky held it!
And yet, one could not!

He went to the edge of the stream, and looking down at the little pool,
thought: 'Youth and spring! What has become of them all, I wonder?'

And then, in sudden fear of having this memory jarred by human
encounter, he went back to the lane, and pensively retraced his steps to
the crossroads.

Beside the car an old, grey-bearded labourer was leaning on a stick,
talking to the chauffeur. He broke off at once, as though guilty of
disrespect, and touching his hat, prepared to limp on down