They were well on towards Watters by now, and the rhythmic dance of the light had broken over one of the gaps, catching a sudden reflection from clean steel. They stopped to look. It was only a plough, flung on its side in the hedge, waiting the morrow and renewal of toil. The bright share told that it had been in use that day, and Lanty knew that, near it in the dark, the long, clean furrows curved up over the hill. It seemed a small, inadequate tool for its great work; simple, too, as are all enduring things; yet it had the whole of history behind it. “Yes, I suppose I do,” he said at last. “We all stand alone, if it comes to that. We drive our furrow single-handed, out of the dark into the dark, though we’ve got to reckon with the soil that others have left, just as others must reckon with our leavings after us. But it’s our job while we’re on to it, all the same. It’s our job while the light lasts, to make the best of it we can. It’s always one man’s hand on the lonely plough.” For a long moment they stood silent, ringed round by the night, in closer communion than they had ever found themselves. Strange talk still and new was this, but she did not shrink from it, now; and he, opening his heart, did not find it shuttered by an alien hand. Together they looked through the dim Gate, so near that, when he stooped his head to the lantern, he felt her hair against his face. Calls for help came out of the vast beyond, and they took guiltily to pursuit, to find Helwise and Hamer marooned up a blind alley in the swamping sea of the dark, and, as they set them right again, a new elf-candle appeared from the opposite direction, having Wiggie somewhere in its vicinity. He was just back from an engagement in town, and in the glowing hall at Watters looked shockingly thin and ill, though excellently clothed and brushed, making Lancaster conscious of muddy boots and the general wear of a busy day. He began to have his favourite complaint of feeling old, and when Dandy, after a miracle-change into something softly pink, danced in to dinner on the singer’s arm, the lightly-welded link of the Lane snapped as lightly, leaving her farther than before.