The old fellow waited a while, and walked about the fair; but he saw no more of McNab, and had to turn his face homewards without a word of reassurance. As he passed through the narrow passage, thronged with hard-faced men and boys, which divided the pens of crowded pigs and sheep, it made him wince a little to see Mr. Pogson, his ruddy face still ruddier, and his sunken little eyes sparkling with drink and with unwonted expectations of wealth, cutting at the hind-quarters of his newly-bought pigs with the sapling, shouting in a hard voice to greasy friends, and looking at every one who came near him as if they had better mind what they were about. For old Oliver he had a profound contempt; and as the old man passed him, he caught the pig that was nearest him at the moment such a cut with his switch, that its squeaks resounded through the street; it tried to escape over the backs of its fellows, who all with a loud chorus of squeaking rushed to the further side of the pen. Which so pleased Mr. Pogson that he turned to the old man with a wink, as if to say, “Now you see the proper way to treat animals.” But Oliver had passed on quickly. III. Old Oliver trudged down the road from the little town on the hill, with his fairing under his arm, thinking of his old wife sitting in her chimney-corner, and of the old days when he bought the pretty young farm-servant her first fairing, in that same town and on that very same day in May, some five-and-forty years ago. Straight before him were the Cotswold hills, and on their slope he could see the spire of Highfield church, and further down and nearer was the great dark mass of Truerne wood, hiding the hamlet where he had lived all his life. The sight of the wood made him think of the owls, and he unconsciously quickened his pace, as if to make haste and see that all was right with them as yet. Down the long sloping road he went, and then turning off by a bridle-path, passed through another wood--not his, and therefore no place for dallying in--and crossing the river by an old flood-beaten bridge, took his way through a wealth of buttercups that gilded his old boots with yellow dust, to the further side of the water-meadows, where his own beloved wood came down in gentle slopes to the valley. Evening was coming on and the light was subdued; all was quiet and peaceful unless a nightingale broke out suddenly in song from a thicket, or the voice of the chiff-chaff rang out from overhead. Over the bluebells the shadows were lengthening, and against their deep blue, as it mingled in the distance with the blue of the sky peeping through the branches, rose the straight and darkening stem of many an ancient tree. What a change from the noise and worry and ill-dealing and cruelty of the fair! When he came to his own old oak he paused and listened; but no sound was heard but the song of the wood-wren in the higher foliage.