He saw neither Hazel nor Reddin, but only the swan, the yew-tree swan, his creation, now doomed to be for ever unfinished. The generations to come would look upon a beakless swan, and would think he had meant it so. Tears came into his eyes--smarting, difficult tears. The room was full of brooding misery. Reddin felt awkward and astounded. 'Why, Vessons?' he said in rather a sheepish tone. Vessons did not turn. He fumbled with the door-handle. Reddin got up and went across to him. 'Why, Vessons?' he said again, with a hand on his shoulder. 'You and I can't part, you know.' 'We mun.' 'But why, man? What's up with you, Andrew?' The rare Christian name softened Vessons. He deigned to explain. 'She is,' he said, with a sidelong nod at Hazel. 'She mocked me.' 'Did you, Hazel?' 'Now then, missus!' Vessons glared at her. 'I only said--' 'Her said, "Never will I!"' shouted Vessons. 'Ah, that's what her said--"Never will I!" That's what _I_ say,' he added with the pride of a phrase-maker. Reddin could make nothing of them, one so red and angry, the other in tears. 'I'll do no 'ooman's will!' said Vessons. 'Look here, Vessons! Be reasonable. Listen to me. I'm your master, aren't I?' 'Ah! Till a month.' 'Well, you take orders from me; that's all that matters. I'm master here.' The tones of his ancestry were in his voice--an ancestry that ruled over and profited by men and women as good as themselves, or better. 'So we'll say no more about it,' he finished, with the frank and winning smile that was one of his few charms. Vessons stared at him for some time, and, as he stared, an idea occurred to him. It was, he felt, a good idea. It would enable him to keep his swan and his self-respect and to get rid of Hazel. As he pondered it, his face slowly creased into smiles. He touched his forelock--a thing only done on pay-days--and withdrew, murmuring, 'Notice is took back.' They saw him go past the window with the steps and the shears, evidently to attend to the swan. Reddin thought how easy it was to manage these underlings--a little authority, a little tact. He turned to Hazel, crying in the high armchair of black oak with its faded rose-coloured cushions. She was crying not only because Vessons had come off victorious, but because her position was now defined, and was not what she would have liked, but also because Reddin's manner to her jarred after last night. Last night, in the comfortless darkness of Hunter's Spinney, he had seemed for a little while to be a fellow-fugitive of hers, one of the defenceless, fleeing from the vague, unknown power that she feared. Then she had pitied him--self-forgetfully, fiercely--gathered his head to her breast as she so often gathered Foxy's. But now he seemed to have forgotten--seemed once more to be of the swift and strong ones that rode down small creatures. She sobbed afresh.