ght he went back to Hadleigh Wood. It was the
wood of despair, the focal point of all his pain, and he was drawn to
it irresistibly through the gathering darkness.

On the second evening he found it difficult to get away. Mavis
stopped him, asked him some domestic question, and then began to talk
about a new suit of clothes for their boy. He was alive again now,
emerged from his somnambulistic state, and he gave full attention to
this matter of Billy's new serge suit; nevertheless, all at once she
apologized for troubling him, and inquired if he had anything on his
mind.

"No, Mav, of course not."

"Are you sure, Will? Do tell me if you've something worrying you."

"What should I have to worry me?" and he put his arm round her ample
waist, and gave her an affectionate squeeze.

"The hay's all right, isn't it?"

"Yes, everything is all right.... You can't do better than you've
suggested about Billy. Take him with you to Manninglea--and, look
here, if Mr. Jones can't fit him properly out of stock, let him make
the suit to measure. Don't consider the extra expense. We can afford
it."

"Thank you, Will." Mavis was delighted. "You've told me to do the very
thing I wanted to do; but of course I'd never have done it without
your authority. I've been longing to see the little chap in clothes
regularly cut out and finished for him, and nobody else."

Going through the yard Dale was stopped by his men. The foreman wanted
directions for to-morrow's work; the carter asked for three new tires;
the stableman regretted to be compelled to report that one of the
horses had broken his manger rack.

As he finally came out on the road, Dale was thinking, "Soon now I
shall be gone, but everything here will be just the same. They will
all of them find that they can do very well without me: the men, the
children, Mavis--yes, even Norah. Mavis will be the one who will
grieve for me. Norah will suffer most, but it will be only for a
little while. She'll take another sweetheart--a real sweetheart this
time, and she'll marry, and give birth to babies; and it will be to
her as if I had died a hundred years ago, as if I had never lived at
all, as if I'd been somebody she'd read of in a story-book, or
somebody she'd dreamed about in one of those silly nasty sort of
dreams which young girls can't help having, but are ashamed to
remember and always try to forget."

Mavis, however, would wish to remember him, and be sorry when she
found h