At tea time she was still missing, and Sarah alone, stiff with conscious rectitude, sat in front of Ruth and ate a double portion of cake and bread-and-butter. Visions of rabbit holes, steel traps, of angry gamekeepers with guns, had begun to form in Ruth’s mind. Her well-earned appetite for tea vanished. Full forgiveness and an undeservedly warm welcome awaited Selina whenever she might choose to put in an appearance. Even Miss McCox, when she cleared away the tea, withdrew the notice given in the heat of discovery, and suggested that Selina might be hunting along the stream. She had seen the strange dog down there no longer than an hour ago. It seemed to Ruth a hopeful suggestion. Also she loved to wander by the stream. In all her dreams of a domain of her own always there had been running water. And now that too was hers. One of the slow Sussex streams moving steadily and very quietly between flowered banks, under overhanging branches. So quietly that you did not at first realize its strength. So quietly that you did not at first hear its song. It was that strange and wonderful hour which comes before sunset after a cloudless day of May sunshine, when it is as if the world had laughed, rejoiced, and sung itself to rest in the everlasting arms. There is a sudden hush, a peace falls, a strange silence—if you listen. Ruth ceased to worry about Selina. She drifted along the path down the stream, and love of the whole world folded her in a great content. A sense of oneness with all that moved and breathed, with the little brethren in hole and hedge, with the flowers’ lavish gift of scent and colour, with the warmth of the sun, a oneness that fused her being with theirs as into one perfect flame. Dear God, how good it all was, how wonderful! The marshy ground where the kingcups and the lady smocks were just now in all their gold and silver glory, the wild cherry, lover of water, still in this late season blossoming among its leaves, the pool where the kingfishers lived among the willows and river palms. And, dreaming, she came to a greensward place where lay the stranger dog. A dog well content, who waved a lazy tail as she came. His nose between his paws, he watched no longer a lonely road. He watched a man. A man in a brown suit who lay full length on the grass. Ruth could not see his face, only the back of a curly head propped by a lean brown hand; and he too was watching something. His absolute stillness made Ruth draw her breath and remain motionless where she stood. No proprietor’s fury against trespassers touched her. Perhaps because she had walked so long on the highway, looking over walls and barred gateways at other people’s preserves. She crept very softly forward so that she too could see what so engrossed him. A pair of kingfishers teaching their brood to fly.