Yet all the time he was longing to be gone, and to be able to ease the strain upon his nerves by fresh scenes and steady movement. He was still nervous of the men; the kitchen garden still irked him; the sight of The Cat stealing softly across the soil still foolishly made him ache. But it was not until the gilded freshness of the short spring day began to dim a little that he roused himself to action, hurrying now where he had loitered and fretted, as if in a sudden panic lest he should be too late. Passing the last of the greenhouses, he crossed between borders of box to an arch in the high wall, where there were cherry-trees nailed flat to left and right like the sticks of so many fans. There was a little wicket-gate beneath the arch, and as he laid his hand upon it he turned. Even from that distance he could discern the figure of Machell in one of the houses, and by the stillness of his attitude he could tell that he was watching him. Watching to see the last of him, he said to himself, bitterly!... Watching as he would watch him on that last day, when he saw him leave the home of his youth for ever. Even when he had passed along to the right, so that the wall came between him and Len, he could still feel his eyes fixed upon him, following him. They troubled him, making him nervous and uncertain in his movements, conscious that his back was bent and his step not altogether steady. He became so obsessed by them, at last, that suddenly he swung round, certain that Len had followed him across the garden, and was watching from the gate. There was no one under the arch, however, and he moved on again, feeling hot and foolish; yet nevertheless the intolerable sensation of being spied upon remained. Down the steep rush of the hill he went beneath tall, splendidly-spaced trees, the smooth grass between which would presently be coloured and starred by daffodils and wild white hyacinths. Under the leafless boughs of beech he could see the hills,--the mountain-land and moorland which ring in all this part of the country, except where, on the one side, it runs rolling to the sea. In the natural arches to his right were framed the long slopes of the park, and almost beneath his feet as he came down were the massed roofs of the Hall. He had never thought very much about the Hall before, even though the greater part of his life had been spent in its vicinity. He had accepted it, of course, as the central fact of the situation, the reason for which he and his work existed at all; but he had not thought much about it. The gardens were his world, especially the kitchen garden, and once outside their limits things were apt to seem a little blurred. There were many days when the Hall, empty and still, and wrapped in rain or mist, seemed almost as far away from him as his lads in Canada.