They would go, and he would see to the house, and when there were barns to see to, he would see to the barns as well. He had always been a rare hand at keeping them happy and good, and if he had failed with Marget’s brood, that had been only an accident by the way. Marget’s children, after the first, had seldom been children to his mind. They had been enemies, torturers, mockers, and trained spies. Only once, in the Little Game, had they ever been part of the company he loved, and very soon afterwards he had cast them out. But no child born on the marsh would ever be such as they; the house would prevent it—the peaceful, noble house. They would be friends all right, he and those real children bred to the sound of the sea. Thomas and Agnes could trust them to him all right. All day he and the fiddle would hear their feet, pattering after them on the garden path, and climbing laboriously up the uncarpeted stair. All day the little shrill voices would follow the curlews out to sea, and at night the house would be filled with the hush of a house where children sleep. And on that last early morning, when he came to die, he would hear a little child waking close at hand.... No, he would never be lonely again in all his life, or dull and moped because he was left behind. There were so many things waiting for him to find them again that he would need another life to seek them all. Every inch of the land and stone of the house would have something to say to him when he got back. How many places he had loved would pull at his heart until he had looked on them with his bodily eyes? There were hedges, twists of the road, lights over hill and bay—things that in all his life had not failed in enchantment yet. No other magic ever held but that; no other spell grew stronger with the years. Nature kept hold of her worshippers until they died. With a branch of cherry or a robin’s song, the smell of hay or the fall of June shadows pretending to be night, she could bring them back their youth to the very last. This, out of all the treasures in the world, was the only one that was golden to the end. Perhaps he would never do half of what he wished, in the little breath of time that he had left. Perhaps he would find his legs too weak to carry him very far. They had grown cramped and shaky in Marget’s prison-house. Perhaps his eyes, when wanted, would drop their lids and sleep. They had slept so little at Marget’s that they were tired.