Owing to what the doctor had said it was decided that Grif was not to go to school till an answer should have been received to Aunt Caroline’s letter:――Edward and Palmer would be returning next week. It was on a morning towards the end of September that he wandered away by himself, and his feet of their own accord seemed to take, as they very often did just now, the direction of the churchyard. The rebuilding of the church had not yet been begun, though the canon hoped to see it well in progress before the year was out. Grif’s head was bent, and there was a certain drag in his walk, as if all volition had gone out of it, and he were merely obeying a summons. As he reached the low wall he paused and a look of aversion came into his eyes. Pouncer was with him, and Pouncer, too, appeared to feel his master’s depression. A heaviness of autumn was over them, and in the grey stagnant air each sound――the rattle of a passing cart, the cry of a boy driving sheep――dropped like a stone into a pond, became lost in the silence which spread above it again, sending only a faint ripple out to some eternal shore. He looked at the reddening blackberry-leaves; he stroked them softly: and, had anyone been there to see it, there must have seemed something peculiarly pathetic in that simple action. Then, in the distance, he heard the hoot of an approaching motor. It told him that the doctor was coming, and for some obscure reason he was seized by a desire to hide. He climbed the wall and crouched down below it on the other side, holding Pouncer close to him till the car had passed. Then he wondered why he had hidden. He did not know why; only from day to day the instinct was growing stronger and stronger within him to hide from everything. The passing of the doctor reminded him of the drive they had taken together, and of the promise he had then made to go to see the Batts. He had not kept his promise: he had not been able to keep it; for it seemed to require an almost impossible effort of will now to do even the simplest things. At length he conquered his listlessness and climbed back into the road. He actually ran for a little way, trying to get out of sight of the churchyard as quickly as possible, as if he feared to walk on and on, as he sometimes did in a nightmare, and still find it close beside him. Even Pouncer appeared to be affected by the same idea, for he raced ahead, barking and puffing, spreading out his legs in a clumsy gallop. Gradually Grif’s feet began to move more slowly, and at last he came to a complete standstill in the middle of the road. Pouncer looked back at him anxiously, still keeping a little in front, but the boy remained motionless, his eyes half shut. He wanted to go on, yet something called him back. In a vague way he realized that he had reached a sort of crisis, and that defeat, should it occur again, would this time be permanent....