Hearing that the small help I could give would be welcome, I started out, much, I suppose, as Malory had started, with my bag in my hand, and reached the tiny station one evening in early April. The stationmaster directed me across the fields, by a way which I felt I already knew, and as I walked I wondered what had become of Malory; presumably he had turned his hand to a fighting trade, or had he sought some bizarre occupation congenial to him, in the bazaars of Bagdad, or in a North Sea drifter, or had the air called to him? I could not decide; perhaps the Pennistans would have news of his whereabouts. But they had none. He had sent them a field post card from Gallipoli, and since then he had again disappeared; they did not seem very much surprised, and I guessed that in their slow instinctive way they had felt him to be a transitory, elusive man, who might be expected to turn up in his own time from some unanticipated corner. They suggested, however, that I should walk over to Westmacotts’ on a Sunday, and inquire from their daughter Ruth about Mr. Malory. I cannot say that I was unhappy at the Pennistans’, for, though I fretted a good deal at my comparative inactivity, the peace and stability of the place, of which Malory had so often spoken, stole over me with gradual enchantment of my spirit, like the incoming tide steals gradually over the sands. During the first days I took a curious delight in discovering the spots that had figured in his story, the fields, the dairy, and the cowshed, in recognising the pungent farm smells which had pleased his alert senses. These things were the same, but in other respects much was changed. The three bullock-like sons were gone, and few men remained to work the land. Rawdon Westmacott, they told me, was at the war, so was Nancy’s husband. And on sunny days I used to watch the aeroplanes come sailing up out of the blue, the sun catching their wings, and tumble, for sheer joy it seemed, in the air, while the hum of their engines filled the whole sky as with a gigantic beehive. One detail I noticed after several days. The cage of mice which Malory had given to Ruth was no longer in the place I expected to see it, on the kitchen window-sill.