“What’s that?” Lancaster laughed again, amused but embarrassed. “You want me to tackle her--talk to her nicely, point out what she’s throwing away? That’s a bit too much to ask, Wolf! I’m not agent for Bluecaster for that.” “She’d happen take it from you. She’d ha’ took it from your father, Mr. Lancaster. There’s a many he’s talked into a right way o’ thinking--ay, an’ women-folk among ’em!--as is glad and proud of it to-day.” “Yes, but I’m----” Lancaster looked rather helpless--“well--not my father, Wolf!” “You’re your father’s son. What a Lancaster says, goes--with most of us. You’ll try it, sir?” “I don’t see how I can. What has your wife to say about it?” “Something of the same mak as Lup, sir--lile or nowt, an’ nowt most often of the two. She sticks to it there’s trouble ahead, anyhow, and it’s no odds what road it travels. She’s got a queer trick of sitting an’ watching the tide, like as if she’s waiting to see something happen.” “But surely she’s tried to make Lup hear reason?” “Ay, I reckon she has, though she’s never let wit on it to me. He’s the very apple of her eye; she’s not like to let him go unspoken. But you’ll have a shot, won’t you, Mr. Lancaster? Do, sir--do now!” The tone was first wheedling, then wistful. “’Tisn’t only the lad. It means the farm--to me.” He looked across at the agent with a childlike trustfulness that was almost absurdly pathetic, and Lancaster broke suddenly. “Well, well, I’ll see what I can do!” he said, smiling somewhat wryly, and went out to help the old man into his trap, a growing feeling upon him of having seen the curtain rise upon some slow working of Fate. The dog-cart jogged through the gate, and for a moment he saw Lup’s head above the wall as he turned his horse towards the marsh. The rap of the hoofs came to him for long enough, dying and returning, until the last hill between swallowed them up. And he felt old. CHAPTER II THE GREEN GATES OF VISION:--I. DUSK He went back into the house when the distance had snapped the last vibrating link, but he did not stay there. The office was still under the domination of the young man’s silent anger, the old man’s piteous revolt. He felt troubled for both, seeing the situation as each saw it, and was conscious of sharp impatience with the cause of the deadlock, though in his own mind he was certain that her obstinacy would not last. But the whole affair was an unnecessary worry with which he could have dispensed very thankfully, and added heavily to his sense of weary irritation.