And then gradually his mind cleared again, and set the warning and creeping trouble aside. There came back to him like a repeated song the sweetness of this tranquil evening return. The grass crushed softly underneath the wheels, and on the quiet road there was peace for the creaking bones of the ancient trap. He felt warm in the sun and soothed and freshened by the tender air. The light was gold on the dark coat of the horse, and on Bob’s stooping shoulders and bent head. Yet behind all the comfort of renewed content he felt continually that he was very tired. The journey had been a long one—longer than he had thought; perhaps he would never have come if he had known how long. Those mind-travels of his had been easier by far, when his body was left behind and nothing jolted or jarred. He was perfectly certain that he could never face it again, but then he was done with all his journeying now. He was at home; he had escaped Marget; he was at home. It did not matter how tired you were when once you had reached home. The green road ran out from between its hedges close in front, and seemed to be lost in a stretch of open field. It looked, like the rest of the old man’s span of life, as if it ran smoothly to the end, yet all the while the river lay between field and road. Often enough, folks coming home in the dark had gone over the sheer drop into its hidden bed. Kit tightened the reins nervously when he came to the bank, and Bob felt the tug on the bit and glanced behind. The old man was out of himself to-night, he thought, and as full of the shakes as a piece of doddering grass. First of all, he had boggled at the sea, and here he was taking steck at the river, too! He turned the horse to the left, and stopped again, at a meadow gate. Thomas was waiting at the meadow gate. He was up at the trap side before it came to rest, and as his eyes fell upon him Kit felt suddenly very old. This son of his was so lithe and strong, so full of life at its height, so healthy and fine-coloured and clean-drawn. There was nothing about him that was betrayed or made ashamed by the pure tones and line of marsh and sky. By comparison Kit felt himself and Bob to be broken and fusty like the trap, unbeautifully finished things blurring the exquisitely ending day. Not all the clean air and space could give them back that look, which belongs only to Nature and the young. They were blots on the landscape, he felt, an offence to the eye ... like an old boot flung away in a flowering hedge ... old bottles cast on the emptiness of the sands....