“You can’t bring back the dead to the lone living. You can’t put back the laylock by the door.” “Nay, I wish I could!” Thomas’s face fell. “At Marget’s I had ’em both.” “It’s your old home, think on,” Agnes said wistfully, but he shook his head. “’Tisn’t home when the music’s all ganged.” A silence fell on the three of them after that, the silence of helplessness ceasing from futile speech. There are things that cannot happen to our desire because we have stopped the way for them ourselves. The gains of life are all of them had through loss, and for every coin that we take at least we must put a counter down. The old and the young folks had both shut a door at their backs, and when they tried to get through to each other the doors were barred. Kit knew that, since the music had failed, there was no place for him here. The music could only live where the dream lived, and he had left it behind. He had always risked the counters of life for fairy gold, and now all that remained to him was his invisible treasure of the heart. Comfort, position, peace in his last days—all must go into the fire to serve the fine flame of his dream. He was only a vague old man who had made a muddle of life, but firmly and fightingly he was sure of that. There was nothing here for him but the shell of lovely things grown strange. That which he had made for himself he might have, but nothing else. “For what we take we must pay, and the price is cruel hard.” And Thomas and Agnes, with their unaccepted oblation of satisfaction and thanks? They, too, had taken, and would have to pay.... “You’ll settle after a bit,” Thomas argued, but his voice was flat. “I’ll never settle, not I.” “It’s early days to say that.” For the first time Kit looked him firmly in the face. “I’m going back to Marget,” he declared aloud. Agnes uttered a sharp cry, and Thomas flushed. “Nay, Father, you’re not,” he answered, setting his mouth. “Ay, but I am that. I shouldn’t ha’ come. Folks as gang once should bide away.” “What, she’s as bad to you as an old witch!” Agnes broke out. “She’s been bad to you all along. She doesn’t do right by you at all.” “I care nowt for that if I have the rest.” The stress and anguish had gone out of his face, as well as the look that sought and couldn’t find. He looked older and frailer, but he looked certain and secure. The little strength that he had was going fast, but he would never have to try it like this again. He took a firm step towards the door, but Thomas put himself in between. “Nay, then, you’ll gang none!” he said through his shut teeth. The dark flush rose in his face to the roots of his hair. His voice was suddenly brutal, fierce and coarse. “What-like fools d’ye think we’ll look?” he cried; “and after all the trouble we’ve took an’ all?” “I’ve got to gang,” Kit told him, looking him in the eyes. “Well, you waint, an’ that’s flat!” “Let me gang,” the old man begged.