Other people were sitting beside him on the same seat. They all seemed like people he remembered a very long time ago. In the darkness opposite, beyond the windows of the train, he could see their reflections clearly. He looked at the reflections but could not quite remember. A woman was sitting on his left. She was quite young. She was more like some one that he most deeply remembered than all the others were. He gazed at her, and tried to clear his mind. He did not turn and stare at her, but he quietly watched her reflection before him in the dark. Every detail of her dress, her young face, her hat, the little ornaments she wore, were minutely clear before him, looking out of the dark. So contented she looked you would say she was untouched by war. As he gazed at the clear calm face and the dress that seemed neat though old and, like all things, so faraway, his mind grew clearer and clearer. It seemed to him certain it was the face of his mother, but from thirty years ago, out of old memories and one picture. He felt sure it was his mother as she had been when he was very small. And yet after thirty years how could he know? He puzzled to try and be quite sure. But how she came to be there, looking like that, out of those oldest memories, he did not think of at all. He seemed to be hugely tired by many things and did not want to think. Yet he was very happy, more happy even than tired men just come home all new to comfort. He gazed and gazed at the face in the dark. And then he felt quite sure. He was about to speak. Was she looking at him? Was she watching him, he wondered. He glanced for the first time to his own reflection in that clear row of faces. His own reflection was not there, but blank dark showed between his two neighbours. And then he knew he was dead. Old England Towards winter’s end on a high, big, bare down, in the south of England, John Plowman was plowing. He was plowing the brown field at the top of the hill, good soil of the clay; a few yards lower down was nothing but chalk, with shallow flinty soil and steep to plow; so they let briars grow there. For generations his forbears had plowed on the top of that hill. John did not know how many. The hills were very old; it might have been always. He scarcely looked to see if his furrow was going straight. The work he was doing was so much in his blood that he could almost feel if furrows were straight or not. Year after year they moved on the same old landmarks; thorn trees and briars mostly guided the plow, where they stood on the untamed land beyond; the thorn trees grew old at their guiding, and still the furrows varied not by the breadth of a hoof-mark.