It was a boon-clip, which meant that the farmers round had come to help, or had sent their sons or daughters or hired men, and one or two sons of squires were at work with the shears as well. There were certain clippers who always came, and who always sat in the same place, just as the lock-trimmer was always the “lock,” and the man with the tar-pot always had the tar. Thomas was one of those who always came, and his place was under the wall of the house facing the arch. Agnes knew why he had chosen this place, though it was one of the hottest in the yard. When he looked out through the arch and the steam of the tar rising misty in the air, he could see the land rolling westward to the sea. “I like to set looking towards the marsh,” he always said; “I don’t feel suited anywheres else,” and though he could not see the marsh for the curving land, he knew where it lay by the light in the sky, as all marsh-bred people know. Year after year he had sat there at the clip, and lifted his head when a pause came, and looked out. But to-day he had left the place for somebody else. To-day he was in the shade by the south wall. Agnes brought him his first drink, and he took it without so much as a look or a word, and though she had lingered a moment after he took up his shears, they still had not spoken nor had their glances met. She knew well enough, of course, why he had moved; there was no need for him to be afraid that she might ask. All these years when he looked through the arch he had looked towards his home, and after all the years there was a stranger in his home. There was no point now in looking towards the place where it had been. His eye, as it travelled, would check itself in its flight, just as his body would stop and turn away at the door.