He stayed at Greystones for half-an-hour, talking idly, and looking round the kitchen with very mingled feelings. It seemed to be just as it was the last time he had been there five years ago. Nothing was altered. The great oak table stood under the transom windows, the bridewain near the bed; he was sure that the fire had never been allowed to die out; and hams and three whole sheep hung curing in the chimney as he remembered they used to do. His eyes rested upon the clock. Once he had listened to it striking the hour of midnight under unhappy circumstances. Now he listened to it striking the hour of noon, under other circumstances, not less unhappy. It was only twelve o'clock! He had arrived at day-break in a mood partaking more of resignation than disappointment, and already he had roused the sleeping dogs of his nature. They were in full cry after forbidden sport. He felt that he could sit no longer talking commonplaces to the old woman, and rose. "What, off already!" she said. "I'm going to the Meet. Most of my old friends will be there, and it's too good an opportunity of seeing them all to be lost. I'll come in again on my way back. Isn't Barbara going?" "She's been and returned. Barbara's a good lass and looks after her old great-granny! The Lord will bless her!" The girl walked with him to the garden gate, told him that Peter had promised to wrestle, and that he would be in time for the games if he hurried; then she came back to the kitchen, meditatively. The misty morning had blossomed out into a fine noon. A few showers had fallen, but the sun glanced through them, and they were not heavy enough to damp the spirits of men used to bitter winds and merciless rains. The patch of flat ground about the Shepherds' Rest thronged with life. Sheep, dogs, and human voices, both male and female, for the wives and daughters gathered to see the games, added to the clamour of a wild stream that rushed through the pass, below the inn. Above and all around, the grey crags and wide sweeps of heather and bracken were wrapped in sombre silence, save when a pair of herons flew screaming by to their feeding-ground on some distant tarn. When Joel Hart came down the defile he halted for a moment to view the animated scene below him. He was drawn towards it, yet repulsed. The sight of so many well-known figures, after five years' wandering among strangers, quickened his blood. Yet between them and him the thought of Lucy flashed. He wished that he had not come, but returned to Forest Hall, where he could have indulged his feelings for her in undisturbed retreat; then, again, he was glad that he had come, for he wanted to distract his mind from the still small voice of conscience which would not let him be. His meditation had an abrupt end. Someone saw him, and his old friends--those wild young men with whom he had wasted his substance in the past--carried him off to the inn, where he ordered drinks all round.