It was even with a new sense of freedom that he went off, late that afternoon, to the town; he was like a boy just out of school. He had no very vivid intention of going anywhere; but lately the town had grown before him so that he loved to stand and watch it, its life and movement, its colour and romance. He loved, above all, the market-place with its cobbled stones over which rattled innumerable little carts, its booths, its quaint and delightful chatter, its old grey tower. It was one of the great features of his new view that places mattered, that, indeed, they were symbols of a great and visible importance; stocks and stones seemed to him now to be possessed of such vitality that they almost frightened him, they knew so much and had lived so long a time. The evening light was over the market-place; the sun, peering through a pillar of cloudless blue, cut sharply between the straight walls of the Town Hall and a neighbouring chimney, flung itself full upon the tower. It caught the stones and shot them with myriad lights; it played with the fruit on the stall at the tower’s foot until the apples were red as rubies and the oranges shone like gold. It bathed it, caressed it, enfolded it, and showed the modern things on every side that old friends were, after all, the best, and that fine feathers did not always make the finest birds. The rest of the market-place was in shadow, purple in the corners and crevices, the faintest blue in the higher air, a haze of golden-grey in the central square. It was full of people standing, for the most part, discussing the events of the day; in the corner by the tower there was a Punch and Judy show, and Maradick could hear the shrill cries of Mr. Punch rising above the general chatter. Over everything there was a delicious scent of all the best things in the world—ripe orchards, flowering lanes, and the sharp pungent breath of the sea; in the golden haze of the evening everything seemed to be waiting, breathlessly, in spite of the noise of voices, for some great moment. Maradick had never felt so perfectly in tune with the world. He passed across to the Punch and Judy show, and stood in a corner by the fruit stall under the tower and watched Mr. Punch. That gentleman was in a very bad temper to-night, and he banged with his stick at everything that he could see; poor Judy was in for a bad time, and sank repeatedly beneath the blows which should have slain an ox. Toby looked on very indifferently until it was his turn, when he bit furiously at Mr. Punch’s trousers and showed his teeth, and choked in his frill and behaved like a most ferocious animal. Then there came the policeman, and Mr. Punch was carried, swearing and cursing, off to prison, but in a moment he was back again, as perky as before, and committing murders at the rate of two a minute.