“We all forgathered together at the gate, you and I and the dogs. I told you about Larry, how he had come the night before, tired and miserable, and hunted everywhere, and early in the morning he had gone again, so far as I knew. And just before you came I had found him down by the stream, quite happy apparently, with a man. I think I told you?” “Yes.” “The man was watching some kingfishers, and I stopped to watch them too. Very still we all were. I had never seen the birds close. The man was lying on the grass, but he looked a tall man. He wore a brown suit, rather shabby. I could not see his face, only the back of his head propped up on his hand. It was a long, thin hand, very sunburnt. A well-shaped, sensitive hand. And he had dark hair with a strong wave in it. Though it was cut very short, the waves showed quite plainly and evenly.” North had taken his pipe out of his mouth now and was staring at it. “Then your motor siren startled us all, and the man vanished as swiftly, it seemed, as the birds. I wondered just a little—when I thought of it after, where he could have got to—but not for long. This morning I saw the same man again. I was in the buttercup field, and he was standing in the road in front of the new cottages, looking at them. Again I could only see his back, and he is very tall. He had no hat on, and it was the same dark wavy hair. You know the little pitch of hill that goes up to the cottages? When I reached the bottom I could see him quite clearly. He was pulling Larry towards him by a handkerchief lead, and then letting him go suddenly—playing with him, you know. And I could hear Larry snarling as a dog does in play. Then Larry caught sight of me and stopped to look. And when he looked the man turned and looked at me too——” She paused. The summer sounds of the farm sang on, but it seemed that just around those two there was a tense silence. North broke it. “Well!” he said, his voice harsh and almost impatient. “He had a thin, very sunburnt face,” Ruth went on, “lined, but with the lines that laughter makes. Very blue eyes, the blue eyes that look as if they had a candle lit behind them. When he saw me he smiled. There was a flash of very white teeth, and his smile was like a sudden bright light.” North’s pipe dropped on to the flagged pathway with the little dull click of falling wood. Ruth leant towards him; her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “Was Dick Carey like that?” she asked. “Yes.” North met her eyes for the first time since she had begun to tell him. The suggestion of unwillingness to listen which had shown in his manner from the first dropped from him. “What happened next?” “I don’t quite know how to describe it. He did not fade or vanish or anything like that. He remained quite distinct, and that wonderful smile still shone, but my sight failed. It seemed to grow more and more dim until at last I could not see him at all. I hurried, I even tried to call out to him, but it was no good.”