He went, and found Maggie perfectly well. The postal orders had not come, because the last lady, the lady with the title, had not paid her. Maggie was good as gold again, placid and at peace. "Why," he asked himself bitterly, "why did I not leave her to her peace?" And a still more bitter voice answered, "Why not you, as well as anybody else?" BOOK III CHAPTER XXVIII Eastward along the Humber, past the brown wharves and the great square blocks of the warehouses, past the tall chimneys and the docks with their thin pine-forest of masts, there lie the forlorn flat lands of Holderness. Field after field, they stretch, lands level as water, only raised above the river by a fringe of turf and a belt of silt and sand. Earth and water are of one form and of one colour, for, beyond the brown belt, the widening river lies like a brown furrowed field, with a clayey gleam on the crests of its furrows. When the grey days come, water and earth and sky are one, and the river rolls sluggishly, as if shores and sky oppressed it, as if it took its motion from the dragging clouds. Eleven miles from Scale a thin line of red roofs runs for a field's length up the shore, marking the neck of the estuary. It is the fishing hamlet of Fawlness. Its one street lies on the flat fields low and straight as a dyke. Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of land a narrow creek. Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline. Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness. Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him. This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to live there.