es, and, turning a little
against the gate, he saw the house, a pale pearl-grey on this clear day.
He turned to his left and saw cultivated land far as the cliffs where
once waste had been; and here and there on the rolling slopes of the
moor beyond he saw a little grey farmstead that was his too, whose
tenants owed their prosperity to him. And for the first time in his life
the sight gave him no joy. Archelaus had drawn a blight over it all. He
might tell himself with the resentful anger of old age that the thing
was all wrong, absurd even; but that availed nothing. Years had not
softened the fact that the presence of Archelaus had power to spoil
things for him, now as when he had been a child. Archelaus was somewhere
now with little Jimmy, telling him tales of the far places of the earth,
which he, Ishmael, had never seen, never would see. Jim was listening
entranced, his bright brown eyes shining as Nicky's did when he was
moved, as Phoebe's had been wont to do.

A bright whistling sounded from the direction of the house, and Nicky
came to the gate leading from the farmyard and stood looking across it.
He saw Ishmael, and, waving his hat, began to come over the field
towards him. And quite suddenly a certain balm slipped into Ishmael's
grieved heart. At least he had Nicky ... and that, after all, was what
Cloom meant. Cloom might in all these years have failed him as far as
she herself was concerned, leaving him feeling bereft and lost, but it
was not in her power or in that of Archelaus to spoil whatever since
Nicky's birth had been his chief reason for loving Cloom. This was not a
blind love as the mere instinct for acres had been--this was the motive
power of love itself. He waited in sudden gladness by the gate.

The day sharpened as it went on, cold rain blew up, and the inmates of
the Manor began to be anxious that Archelaus had not yet come in with
little Jim. No one seemed to know where he had gone or taken the child.
As the day wore on Marjorie, usually a very placid, strong-minded
mother, began to grow frantic. She declared that never since he came to
the place had she considered Archelaus quite sane or responsible, and
that Ishmael ought to have known better to keep such a queer old man on
in the same house as a child. Nicky tried to comfort her before he went
out for the third time on his horse to try and find some trace of the
two missing members of the family. Ishmael could do nothing but wander
from r