The surreptitious deed he meditated gave him almost a skulking air as he neared the Common, and he shrank from the observation of all he met, though with the exception of Uncle Lilliwhyte in a corduroy sleeved waistcoat, driving cows with a weed-hook, and an old crone who stopped and muttered with twisted head, he saw only frightened partridges whirring above or rabbits and field-mice scurrying at his feet. Near Blackwater Hall he encountered two of Jinny’s milch-goats tethered, pasturing on the hedgerows, and their bleat had a cynical ring. The Common itself seemed almost to meet the sky, for clouds had gathered as suddenly as the crowd by the Silverlane Pump. He was feeling dispirited as he stole towards the house, but as he caught sight of the stables and barn at the rear, it seemed a happy idea to plant his note in some obtrusive coign. His heart beat like a raw burglar’s as he stood surveying from afar the primitive sheds whose roofs were thatch, whose gates palings, whose sides faggots, and in one of which he could see Methusalem’s head in a trough of oats. The stable-shed would be the surest place, he thought, or perhaps he could pin the note on to the harness he saw hanging in an adjoining shed from nails in the beams. Coming nearer to peer at Methusalem’s manger, he was startled by the sight of a brown smock-frocked figure crouched on the littered, dungy floor and belatedly brushing Methusalem’s fetlocks. Before he could escape he saw the wizened, snow-bearded, horn-spectacled face turned up at him, and heard himself recognized in a weakened but unmistakable voice. “Why, bless my soul! Ef that bain’t little Willie Flynt!” Daniel Quarles rose and straightened himself to his full height, but nothing in Little Bradmarsh had seemed to Will so pitifully shrunken. “Little” Willie Flynt indeed towered over the patriarch who had once seemed Herculean to him. Yet if the robustiousness that the old carrier had preserved in his eighties had vanished at last, there was still fire in his eye and a fang or two in his mouth. “Hope you are well, Mr. Quarles,” said Will, recovering from the double shock of discovering and being discovered. “No, you don’t, my lad,” piped the Gaffer. “Did, you’d a come sooner, seein’ as Time is gettin’ away from me.” “Did Jin—did your granddaughter tell you I was back?” “She ain’t scarcely told me nawthen else.” Will’s cheeks burned. “You ain’t come back improved, says she.” Will’s flush grew redder. “But Oi don’t agree with her—you’ve growed like a prize marrow. Come into the house and she shall make you a dish o’ tay—Oi don’t drink it myself, bein’ as Oi promised John Wesley.” “No, thank you—I’d rather talk where we are.”