“She said it ended well—but what’s the good of death—what’s the good of that?” He turned his face to the ashes in the grate, and sat brooding. Outside, among the trees, some wild animal set up a thin, wailing cry. “Damn that row!” said I, stirring, looking also into the grey fire. “It’s some stoat or weasel, or something. It’s been going on like that for nearly a week. I’ve shot in the trees ever so many times. There were two—one’s gone.” Continuously, through the heavy, chilling silence, came the miserable crying from the darkness among the trees. “You know,” he said, “she hated me this afternoon, and I hated her——” It was midnight, full of sick thoughts. “It is no good,” said I. “Go to bed—it will be morning in a few hours.” PART III CHAPTER I A NEW START IN LIFE Lettie was wedded, as I had said, before Leslie lost all the wistful traces of his illness. They had been gone away to France five days before we recovered anything like the normal tone in the house. Then, though the routine was the same, everywhere was a sense of loss, and of change. The long voyage in the quiet home was over; we had crossed the bright sea of our youth, and already Lettie had landed and was travelling to a strange destination in a foreign land. It was time for us all to go, to leave the valley of Nethermere whose waters and whose woods were distilled in the essence of our veins. We were the children of the valley of Nethermere, a small nation with language and blood of our own, and to cast ourselves each one into separate exile was painful to us. “I shall have to go now,” said George. “It is my nature to linger an unconscionable time, yet I dread above all things this slow crumbling away from my foundations by which I free myself at last. I must wrench myself away now——” It was the slack time between the hay and the corn harvest, and we sat together in the grey, still morning of August pulling the stack. My hands were sore with tugging the loose wisps from the lower part of the stack, so I waited for the touch of rain to send us indoors. It came at last, and we hurried into the barn. We climbed the ladder into the loft that was strewn with farming implements and with carpenters’ tools. We sat together on the shavings that littered the bench before the high gable window, and looked out over the brooks and the woods and the ponds. The tree-tops were very near to us, and we felt ourselves the centre of the waters and the woods that spread down the rainy valley. “In a few years,” I said, “we shall be almost strangers.” He looked at me with fond, dark eyes and smiled incredulously. “It is as far,” said I, “to the ‘Ram’ as it is for me to London—farther.” “Don’t you want me to go there?” he asked, smiling quietly. “It’s all as one where you go, you will travel north, and I east, and Lettie south. Lettie has departed. In seven weeks I go.—And you?” “I must be gone before you,” he said decisively.