The moon was still pale under the clouds, and the wet road gleamed like pewter. The hedges roared, as the wind moved in them, and every now and then he could hear the swish of a great tree, or the cracking and crying of a wood. In the midst of all this tumult he felt very lonely—if he passed a farm, with slats of lamplight under its blinds, he felt more lonely still. But it was better than the loneliness of a room, of the room to which someone he loved would never come again. He had a sudden memory of Jerry as he had seen him, the morning after the boy’s own night out of doors, sitting like a monkey in the big wash-tub in front of the fire.... It must have been between two and three o’clock in the morning when Mr. Sumption found the road leading past the gape of a big barn. By this time his legs were aching with cold and wet, and his face felt all raw with the sting of the rain. It would be good to take shelter for a little while. Then he would go home, and brave Mrs. Hubble. He would be back in his study when she brought in his breakfast. Breakfast ... he rubbed his big hands together, he was already beginning to feel hungry. But before he went home he must rest. That weariness which had muffled him like a cloak in the chapel, fumbling his movements and veiling his eyes, was dropping over him now. He felt the weight of it in his limbs, and, worse still, in his heart and brain. When he shut his eyes he saw nothing but rows of heads, staring and wagging.... He went into the barn, and the sudden stopping of the wind and rain made him feel dazed. Then a queer thing happened—he pitched forward on his face into a pile of straw, not giddy, not fainting, merely fast asleep. 12 For some hours he slept heavily in his pitched, huddled attitude, but as the cloud of sleep lightened before waking, he had another dream of the old forge at Bethersden, and of himself working there, in the days before the “voices” came. He saw the great red glow of the forge spread out over the cross-roads, fanning up the road to Horsmonden and the road to Witsunden and the road to Castweasel. He saw the smithy full of it, and himself and his father working in it, with arms swung over the glowing iron—he heard the roar of the furnace and the thump of the hammers; and a great fulness of peace was in his heart. Dimly conscious in his dream of all that had passed since those happy days, he felt a wonderful relief at being back in them, and the sweetest doubt as to the reality of his later experiences.... So it had been a dream, all his ministerial trouble and travail, his brief snatch at love, his son’s birth in sorrow and life in defiance and death in shame.... The hammers swung, and the forge roared, and the light fanned up to the stars....