The slow, sleepy train (the London express never stops at Clinton) jerked through the deep valleys, heavy with woods, golden brown at their heart, the low hills carrying, on their horizons, white drifting clouds that flung long grey shadows. Seymour felt suddenly as though he could never return to London again exactly as he had returned to it before. "That period of my life is over, quite over.... Some one is taking me down here now--I know that I am being compelled to go. But I want to go. I am happier than I have ever been in my life before." Often, in Glebeshire, December days are warm and mellow like the early days of September. It so was now; the country was wrapped in with happy content, birds rose and hung, like telegraph wires, beyond the windows. On a slanting brown field gulls from the sea, white and shining, were hovering, wheeling, sinking into the soil. And yet, as he went, he was not leaving March Square behind, but rather taking it with him. He was taking the children too--Bim, Angelina, John, even Sarah (against her will), and it was not her who was in charge of the party. He felt as though, the railway carriages were full and he ought to say continually, "Now, Bim, be quiet. Sit still and look at the picture-book I gave you. Sarah, I shall leave you at the next station if you aren't careful," and that she replied, giving him one of her dark sarcastic looks, "I don't care if you do. I know how to get home all right without your help." He wished that he hadn't brought her, and yet he couldn't help himself. They all had to come. Then, as he looked about the empty carriage, he laughed at himself. Only a fat farmer reading _The Glebeshire Times_. "Marnin', sir," said the farmer. "Warm Christmas we'll be havin', I reckon. Yes, indeed. I see the Bishop's dying--poor old soul too." When they arrived at Clinton he caught himself turning round as though to collect his charges; he thought that the farmer looked at him curiously. "Coming back again has turned my wits.... Now, Angelina, hurry up, can't wait all day." He stopped then abruptly, to pull himself together. "Look here, you're alone, and if you think you're not, you're mad. Remember that you're at the Bar and not even a novelist, so that you have no excuse." The little platform--usually swept by all the winds of the sea, but now as warm as a toasted bun--flooded him with memory. It was a platform especially connected with school, with departure and return--departures when money in one's pocket and cake in one's play-box did not compensate for the hot pain in one's throat and the cold marble feeling of one's legs; but when every feeling of every sort was swallowed by the great overwhelming desire that the train would go so that one need not any longer be agonised by the efforts of replying to Mr. Lasher's continued last words: "Well, good-bye, my boy. A good time, both at work and play"--the train was off.