Once outside he was seized by a passionate impulse to return. Grasping at one thing still out of reach, he was more than probably risking the loss of all. Supposing Agnes should never be won back, no matter what he offered or threw away? It was on the cards, as he was forced to admit. Even without her he would still have the farm, and his payment of satisfaction in his father’s face. But, rough and unthinking as he was, he guessed that partial fulfilment was more to be dreaded than complete loss, that a heart’s desire is better rejected if it cannot be had whole. And indeed, this strife with himself was only a waste of energy, after all. He knew, as things stood, he would never come away. The brothers found nothing more to say as they followed the muddy track to the meadow gate. Bob had tried his eloquence, such as it was, to a hopeless end, and his own position was doubtful, to say the least. At any moment Thomas might have turned, and with just cause. He was the youngest after all, and the only one that had stood on his own feet. John had not had enough courage even to live, and Bob, beaten and slack, was scarcely the one to preach burdens on to another’s back. He was tired, too, after a wearing day and a scream-riddled night; busy, moreover, with the problem of facing Marget with the news. At the back of his mind was a vague idea that Thomas’s wooing was somehow going amiss. He had thought of it while he argued in the house, but Thomas had never thought fit to mention the lass, and it wasn’t his brother’s place to bring her in. The courting, he knew, had been a long one, like his own. He could have told Thomas a thing or two, he felt sure, only telling these things was never any use. In spite of his good sense and superior luck, Thomas must dree his weird like the rest. They had parted where the roads parted on the marsh, and after them through the lifting curtain of the rain had looked the pale wraith that wanted to be the moon. And again, over their heads from the lone farm, now slipped away into the unbordered dark, there trembled the long flight of the violin.