He shut his mouth with an effort, and helped her to clear away, tramping obediently between the front kitchen and the back. Agnes went about her business as if there were nobody there, but Thomas could not resist an occasional glance at the silent guest. He had drawn the shroud away from the fiddle’s face, and when they were not looking, he let it drop behind the table to the floor. He drew a breath of relief when he had done that, and felt a little soothed now that the fiddle was in his hands. He gathered it close to him and stood quiet, letting his glance go stealthily round the room. Now he could reckon every change to the full, the paint and the new furniture and the kitchen grate. He looked at the white-faced clock and the table and the shelf with the books. He looked at the new chair over and over again, and every time he looked it was still new. Dimly, though Agnes never guessed anything of the sort, he realised the new carpet on the stairs.... Only into the old mirror he steadily refused to look, because of the power that lies lurking in a glass. He looked out of the window for his lilac tree. Once or twice he glanced furtively at the door.... Thomas plodded in and out with the pots, a little more hopeful when he was coming back, and a little more troubled when he went away. He said to himself again that things were wrong, that with every minute that passed they were going wrong. So far the old man hadn’t “settled” in the least, and only a blind donkey could pretend that he had. The situation which they had plotted with such care seemed to be getting completely out of hand. They saw their pleasant surprises turn to disappointments as they looked, and could do nothing but watch the change with pained amaze. There had been the chair and the mug, and the pipe and bacca and the seat, and Heaven knew how many other things besides. It was just as if they were all bewitched and upside down, and instead of righting themselves they were getting deeper under the spell. He stared at the old man standing like a stock, and felt there was something sinister in his look. He had an air of waiting for something, listening and looking out—something that was a terrible time on the road. He did not look at home in the very least—a happy old body coming home to stay. Thomas thought it was time that somebody said a word.... So after his last trip he halted and spoke.... “Yon’ll be an old fiddle, I doubt, by now?” “Nay. Fiddles is always young.” “Old as time gangs, I mean, yon’s all.” He looked at the shining thing that he had known so well, and Agnes came to the inner door and listened, drying a pot. “It’s sung Bob an’ me to sleep many a time when we were barns. There’s whiles I wake even yet, hearing music somewheres in the dark.” “I’ll be bound Marget’s barns isn’t fiddled to sleep!” the young wife scoffed behind their backs.