With a feeling of something like shame he kept himself out of sight until the stranger had disappeared, and then experienced a slight shock when Dent called to him in the same cheery tone. Almost without knowing it he had looked for the voice to change, and its geniality jarred on his dismal mood. Somehow it seemed to put him about at the start, and when Dent laid a hand on his shoulder, saying--"Well, Simon!" with a smile, it was all he could do not to give him a surly snarl by way of reply. They went into the old-fashioned room, which smelt of horsehair and wool mats, and Simon seated himself miserably on the extreme edge of a chair. Dent went to the window and lifted a finger to somebody in the street, and then seated himself at the table, and said "Well, Simon!" and smiled again. He was a strongly built man, with a pleasant face, which seemed rather more pleasant than need be to his visitor’s jaundiced eye. He looked away from it, however, staring at the floor, and after the first conventional remarks began his tale of woe, that slow trickle of disaster which always gathered itself into terrible spate. "You’ll know what I’m here for, sir," he concluded, at the end of his first breath, twisting his hat like a tea-tray in his restless hands. "Things has got that bad wi’ us I doubt we can’t go on, and so we’ve made up our minds we’d best clear out next year." Dent nodded kindly in answer, but with a rather abstracted air. He had listened patiently enough to the slow tale, but Simon had a feeling that his tragic recital was not receiving the sympathy it deserved. He began a fresh relation of the ills which had befallen him at the farm, intending a grand climax to be capped by Sarah’s eyes; but there were so many dead troubles to dig out of their graves as he went along, that the last and most vital dropped from the reckoning, after all. "Ay, well, you’ve likely heard all this before," he finished lamely in the middle of a speech, conscious that he had missed his point, though without being able to say how. "We’ve had a bad year this year an’ all, and I can’t see as it’s any use holding on. Me and my missis fixed it up as we come in, so if you’ll take my notice, sir, we’ll go next spring." "Your wife’s in town, is she?" Dent asked. For some reason he looked again at the window from which he had waved. "How does she take the thought of leaving the farm?" "Well, sir, we’ll both feel it, after all these years, but I don’t know as it’s any use calling out. I put it to her as we’d better quit, and she agreed to it right off." "I wish you’d brought her along," the agent said, still speaking in a detached tone. There were some notes on the table within reach of his hand, and he glanced thoughtfully at them as he spoke. Simon stiffened a little, and looked surprised. "I’m speaking for both on us, sir, as I said before."