Now they were passing the agent’s house on the right, a creepered dwelling facing river and hill. It was many a long year since he had been inside, but a certain room was always clear in his mind. He had gone to ask for the farm when his father died, and taken with him the lass he meant to wed. They had sat stiffly on the leather chairs, speaking their parts as bravely as they could. Ann had been far the smarter of the two, spoken up better and known what she was about. Likely enough they had got the farm because of her, but he wasn’t the only man who had to own to that. She was always the better horse, as everybody knew.... Now, when he thought of the room, it was like a picture in a book, and the shy young couple seemed like pictures, too. Yet all his life he had thought of Ann as she was then, with her dark stuff gown and the colour bright in her cheeks, and his real self was still that daft young man, twisting his cap on the edge of an office chair. Folks said you lived your life before you were twenty-five, and that all the rest was simply looking back. Marget would have it he had changed, but change couldn’t touch that picture in his mind. Ann and Kit still sat on their leather chairs, smiling at him, steadfastly alive. The plantation further on which he had seen cut down, was grown again just as tall and thick. The road was dark and damp under the trees, cool in summer and muddy in the wet. Down this hill he had once seen timber-waggons running away. It must have been winter because it had snowed in the night, and the sky was black and the road just sprinkled white. The river was the colour of the blade of an axe, and running as if it was out of control, too. The children were coming from school when the first waggon got away, with a team of three horses and a load of larch. The long, clean poles, straight as a ship’s masts, swung like an anchored boat to the incoming tide. The driver was running close in front of the wheel, lying back on the reins and shouting all the way. The children scattered like feathers thrashed from a bed, and collected again to watch the waggon take the turn, skidding and swinging broadways to the road. The other waggon braked along the wall, driving a furrow in mortar and moss and fern. Kit remembered it all as if it had been last week,—the fine bite in the air and the thundering hoofs, the musical clink of the brasses and the fierce clanking of the chains, the swing and heave and weight and length of the load, the great horses, the nerve and strength of the men.... When you were old you liked to think of these things, to remember that not everybody grew old at the same time. Once he had seen Bob lift a trap through a gate with the help of the cowman from the Hall. The broad shoulders and strong wrists had raised the wheels like toys, and the Squire had sat in the trap above their heads and laughed. And there were still men to do these things though Bob had fallen out.