But as the teams came up, both sides ready with praise (always excepting Saunders, limping vaingloriously), Wiggie walked straight off the ground without looking at anybody, not discourteously, but as if very pressing business were hurrying him away. Indeed, from the moment he took the ball in the Bluecaster circle until he had scored his goal, crossed the field and disappeared, he never really stopped at all. It didn’t do to stop. He must go on walking ... walking ... “Lord, our Creator” ... not rushing, but just walking, or he would never get to the other end. The curate tore after him, waving a coat, but he did not look back. If he turned his head, he would never reach the farm, because he couldn’t see it any longer. He could only go on walking towards the place where it had been a minute ago. There was a stile somewhere in the field; his feet would find it all right. He had really wonderful feet; it was only all the rest of him that was wrong--his heart and his lungs and his head and his blind eyes. Well, it was something to have feet, anyhow. Gravel path, surely? Feet again! And then steps and a flagged floor. It was time he got there, because even his feet would have to stop soon. Yes, he was there ... he could feel the fire, though he could not see it ... there would be the kitten and the rocker.... “Lord, our Creator ... Lord, our----” Harriet explained that Mr. Wigmore was knocked up, probably wanted to rest. No, she had not known he was _that_ sort of player. He had given her to understand he knew nothing about the game. Anyhow, he had won the match for them, snatched it out of the fire at the last moment; not but what they had won it by rights already! If they would kindly make their way to the house, they would find tea in the usual place. She shepherded them up to the back of the farm, and through the kitchen into the house-place, where tea was set on the long table, but in her heart she was troubled. Wiggie had not joined them. Perhaps he was not in the house at all. Perhaps he had gone for quiet to the parlour. She had her hand on the door when a long, gray car drew up at the gate, and the men she had seen at the church hurried up the path. The tale of the gardener’s boy at Watters had not satisfied them, and after a dismal lunch at the “Four Feathers” they had started out on a fresh hunt. Rumours had met them at last of a match and a stranger playing for Bluecaster--“a lile chap what sings a bit”--and in spite of incredulity had come on the wanderer’s trail to Wild Duck. The hatchet-faced man pushed past Harriet into the house. “Is he here?” he flashed. He looked ready to drop. Harriet put her hand back to the parlour door and hesitated. She understood him at once, and for some reason she felt frightened, frightened as she had never been in her life.