The landlord behind the bar made him a low bow, and offered his services to show him over the village. Holdsworth declined his offer with a “Thank you,” and walked into the road. He glanced over his shoulder suspiciously as he advanced, disliking the inquisitive stare with which he had been followed through the bar of the inn by the people drinking there, but no one watched him. He held a stick, on which he leaned as he moved, like an infirm man; and often he paused and gazed around him. The people in the roadway, or in the houses, eyed him as he passed with the curiosity a stranger seldom fails to excite in small unfrequented places; but he took no notice of them; his mind was intent on vivifying the impressions it was receiving with old memories, and adjusting the ideas which had been restored to him out of the dark and secret hiding-places of the past. Few changes had been made in the aspect of the little village to embarrass the picture which his recovered memory had submitted to him. Some alterations in the external form of one or two shops, and two freshly-built houses on the left-hand side facing the blacksmith’s shed, were the only new features in the familiar scene of this quaint broad thoroughfare. His steps grew more reluctant, his face took a sharper expression of pain, though never losing its characteristic of hardness and severity, as he drew near to his old home. He forced himself forwards, and, when abreast, halted and looked at it. The windows were blindless, the garden showed signs of long neglect, and a board nailed to a post leaned towards the road, bearing the announcement, in painted letters, that the house was to let. A row of cobwebs garnished the woodwork of the gate, and glistened in the sunshine; the bare rooms, visible through the windows, looked cheerless and inhospitable; the window-glass was dirty, and some of the panes in the kitchen window were broken. The grass about the house was tall and vividly green. That window, looking towards the trees between the lanes, belonged to Dolly’s room. There were white soft curtains to it in those days, and the glass was pure and transparent as spring-water. That room on the left was the sitting-room. There they had taken their meals; there they had played forfeits, had hunted the slipper, had made the walls ring with innocent laughter. He remembered the old grandmother’s placid smile, the rector’s kindly jokes, his Dolly’s sweet face, throwing a light of purity and beauty about her. And under the sill were the dead branches of the clematis, still held to the wall by the pieces of black leather Dolly’s own hand had nailed. Such humble signs make grief sharper than large memorials.