He would catch the six-twenty-four. He had plenty of time and there would be a good margin in Thrigsby. He could look in at the Foreign Library, of which he was president, and give them his new selection of books to be purchased during the vacation. On the way he met Barnett, the captain of the Bigley Golf Club, and stayed to argue with him about the alterations to the fourteenth green, which he considered scandalous and incompetent. He told Barnett so with such heat and at such length that he only just caught the six-twenty-four and had to leap into a third-class carriage. It was empty. He opened the windows and lay at full length on the seat facing the engine. It was more hot and unpleasant than he had anticipated. He cursed Barnett and extended the malediction to Panoukian. It would have been more pleasant to spend the evening with Miss Clipton, sister and formerly housekeeper to a deceased bishop of Thrigsby, talking about her vegetable marrows. . . . Uncommonly hot. Deucedly hot. The train crawled so that there was no draught. He went to sleep. He was awakened by the roar of the wheels crossing Ockley viaduct. Ockley sprawls up and down the steep sides of a valley. At the bottom runs a black river. Tall chimneys rise from the hillsides. From the viaduct you gaze down into thousands of chimneys trailing black smoke. The smoke rises and curls and writhes upward into the black pall that ever hangs over Ockley. This pall was gold and red and apricot yellow with the light of the sun behind it. There were folk at Bigley who said there was beauty in Ockley. . . . It was a frequent source of after-dinner argument in Bigley. Beauty. For H. J. Beenham all beauty lived away from Thrigsby and its environment. Smoke and beauty were incompatible. Still, in his half-sleeping, half-waking condition there was something impressive in Ockley's golden pall. He raised himself on his elbow the better to look out, when he was shocked and startled by hearing a sort of whimper. Opposite him, in the corner, was sitting a girl, a very pretty girl, with a white, drawn face and her hands pressed together, her shoulders huddled and her face averted. Her eyes were blank and expressionless, and there was a great tear trickling down her nose. The light from the golden pall glowed over her face but seemed only to accentuate its misery and the utter dejection of her attitude.