Bob begged the parson to help the old man into the trap, and at once there were a dozen hands hoisting him up the step, holding needlessly to the horse’s head, and pulling the children from under the wheels. Kit arrived at his seat a little breathless and pulled about, and felt the fiddle quiver against his coat. He was grateful for the sympathy and help, but he had not expected to be sped by a crowd. He couldn’t help shrinking from the cheerful voices and the smiling eyes that made of him a spectacle in the street. They confused him and crossed his thoughts—troubled his perfect journey at the start. He did not know what to do with the buttered scone, and the button-hole worried him dreadfully under the chin. He would have liked to creep quietly out of the house where he had been so sad, and steal silently towards the house where he had been so gay. The crowd saw that they fretted him at last and drew away, but Bob still talked to the parson over the wheel. The old man looked back up the street, and saw the village radiant in the sun, the white wall of the school like a snow-palace in its midst, and the church-tower high and sharp against the sky. He looked up at the trees and saw the leafy roof thick and green and still, and the doors of many mansions among the boughs. “Houses not made wi’ hands,” he said to himself, and wondered where he had heard the words. He looked at the cottages, with their porches and worn steps, their shaded windows and grey walls, their climbing roses and sagging, slated roofs. And for a long moment he looked at his own window which held the enchantment of the tree. From his window on the marsh he would see no trees, neither magic ones on a velvet sward nor giants bent into bondage by the gale. There would be nothing before his eyes which had been straitened so long but the long distances of the sands and the long pathways of the sea.