He talked aloud to himself, sententious in his anxiety, as if he were perfectly sober, whilst the mare bowled along and the rain beat on him. He watched the rain before the gig-lamps, the faint gleaming of the shadowy horse’s body, the passing of the dark hedges. “It’s not a fit night to turn a dog out,” he said to himself, aloud. “It’s high time as it did a bit of clearing up, I’ll be damned if it isn’t. It was a lot of use putting those ten loads of cinders on th’ road. They’ll be washed to kingdom-come if it doesn’t alter. Well, it’s our Fred’s look-out, if they are. He’s top-sawyer as far as those things go. I don’t see why I should concern myself. They can wash to kingdom-come and back again for what I care. I suppose they would be washed back again some day. That’s how things are. Th’ rain tumbles down just to mount up in clouds again. So they say. There’s no more water on the earth than there was in the year naught. That’s the story, my boy, if you understand it. There’s no more to-day than there was a thousand years ago—nor no less either. You can’t wear water out. No, my boy: it’ll give you the go-by. Try to wear it out, and it takes its hook into vapour, it has its fingers at its nose to you. It turns into cloud and falleth as rain on the just and unjust. I wonder if I’m the just or the unjust.” He started awake as the trap lurched deep into a rut. And he wakened to the point in his journey. He had travelled some distance since he was last conscious. But at length he reached the gate, and stumbled heavily down, reeling, gripping fast to the trap. He descended into several inches of water. “Be damned!” he said angrily. “Be damned to the miserable slop.” And he led the horse washing through the gate. He was quite drunk now, moving blindly, in habit. Everywhere there was water underfoot. The raised causeway of the house and the farm-stead was dry, however. But there was a curious roar in the night which seemed to be made in the darkness of his own intoxication. Reeling, blinded, almost without consciousness he carried his parcels and the rug and cushions into the house, dropped them, and went out to put up the horse. Now he was at home, he was a sleep-walker, waiting only for the moment of activity to stop. Very deliberately and carefully, he led the horse down the slope to the cart-shed. She shied and backed. “Why, wha’s amiss?” he hiccupped, plodding steadily on. And he was again in a wash of water, the horse splashed up water as he went. It was thickly dark, save for the gig-lamps, and they lit on a rippling surface of water. “Well, that’s a knock-out,” he said, as he came to the cart-shed, and was wading in six inches of water. But everything seemed to him amusing. He laughed to think of six inches of water being in the cart-shed.