Always, until they took the fiddle from him, he had been able to see the marsh when he chose, the broad, flat stretches and the clean, soft lines. There, where his mind went, was no muddle of mortar and folks. There was no street with the houses crouching cheek by jowl, muttering secrets into each other’s ears; houses, where strange faces looked in, where dust blew in from the road, where nobody was securely still and safely alone. Here, nobody died or was born, or suffered and rebelled, but the whole street knew and put it into words; but out there none of these things kept one ever on guard. Nobody heeded one’s secrets but the sea, and that never told until it gave up its dead. And the sea never heeded, however folk behaved. One could run there, while here one could only walk, could shout and sing without troubling the police; while the strains of a fiddle crying out its soul were as free as a gull crying behind a boat. There was always sun for him when he thought of the marsh, the early-evening sun on road and field. It lay in a great, golden sheet, unbroken as always on a western marsh, stretching out to the far line of the sea. No matter how it rained in the street, in his mind that walked on the marsh there was always sun. The shadows were barely out, and never conquered the gold. And through it along the white road he came to his home. But often he lingered so long on the road that his mind never reached its goal. The journey alone was an adventure in itself, full of things that could not be missed. There were always growing things to see in the dykes, marsh-buttercups on some pool, purple vetches on some hedge. Somewhere a farm would stand up between its orchard and fields, and meet him always with a new surprise. Houses never outstared you on the marsh, for all its long distances and unbroken sweep. They grew upon you by degrees, coming, yet keeping themselves in reserve, like faces peeping welcome round a porch. Even his own home on the sand’s edge, alone on its shooting tongue of land, stood back in a shelter of fence and tree. In spite of its outstanding position, it was yet serenely aloof. It had the withdrawn unconsciousness of well-bred folk, an unawareness of alien eyes. You might stare at it all day long and it would not blink. At Marget’s you were always conscious of the street outside.