Corporal Hollis had it from Sergeant Stanning's own lips that the best picture he had ever painted was hung in the middle room, and that it was not the Sharrow at Corfield Weir, which the Corporal himself admired so much, but the smaller, less ambitious piece called, "The Leaves of the Tree"--a picture of the woods up at Dibley in the sunlight of October, stripped by the winds of autumn, with the bent figure in the foreground of a very old man raking the dead leaves together. They had no difficulty in finding it. "As the leaves of the trees are the lives of men." That legend on the gilt frame seemed to them both at that moment strangely, terribly prophetic. Bill did not tell Melia as they stood in front of the picture that he had risked his own life in a vain attempt to save the man who had painted it, nor did he tell her that the blood of the artist had dyed the sleeves of his tunic. The large room was empty and they sat down solemnly on the settee in front of this canvas, looking at it in silence, yet as they did so holding the hand of each other like a pair of children. Once before had they sat there, in the early days of their marriage, when he had talked to her of those ambitions that were never to materialize. And now, again, with the spirit of peace upon him and stirred by old memories, he sighed to himself and spoke for a moment or two of what might have been. One of these days he had hoped to do something. He had always intended to do something but the time had slipped away. They were still sitting there looking at the picture when two people came into the room. One was a commonplace elderly woman, the other a young man in khaki. Although they were totally unlike in the superficialities of outward bearing it was easy to tell that they were mother and son. His trained movements and upright carriage, his poise and alertness, were not able to conceal an odd resemblance to the wholly different person at his side. William and Melia were concealed by the high-backed, wide-armed settee on which they sat; and as these two people came up the room and took up a position behind it, they did not seem to realize that they could be overheard. "I want you, mother," said the young man in an eager voice, "to look at what to my mind is the picture of this collection. Stand here and you'll get it just right."