And the house that he had known in a dream was no more in reality than a cold strange dwelling; all was there, the whitewash, the thatch, the delft on the dresser, but as a home it was stillborn. The turf did not burn well and the swallows shunned the eaves, feeling, in nature's occult way, that the essential rhythm was wanting. Nor would bees be happy in the skips, but must swarm otherward. One would have said the house was built on some tragic rock.... Only the old dog was faithful, and stayed where his master put him. And the face he had dreamed would not look toward him over the illimitable ocean. Seek as he would, it was never there, with warm gravity. His eyes might strive, but all they would see was the oily swell of the Dogger Bank, and the great plowed field of Biscay Bay, and the smash of foam against the Hebrides. Never would a space in the watery horizon open and show him a threshold of beauty with quiet, brooding face.... And when he came home, either late or early, or on time to the moment, it was, "Och, is it yourself?" And the only interruption to the house was the little more trouble he caused. And his gifts were treated tepidly, though with cupidinous eyes. In the evening, if he stood on the threshold, it was: "Wisha, is it going out you are? And isn't it enough of the fresh air you have, and you on the salt water?" And her embraces were half chastity, half sin, tepidly passionate, unintimate ... so that shame was on him, and no pride or joyousness.... Cold! cold! cold!... A cold house, a cold woman.... No light or warmth or graciousness.... And the old woman whom he had thought of as warm and peaceful by the fire was a hag with a peasant's cupidity: "And isn't it a little more you can be leaving us, darling lad, what with the high price that does be on things in this place and you not spending a brown ha'penny aboard ship?... And herself might be taken sick now, and wouldn't it be a grand thing, a wee store of money in the house? Or the wars might come, find you far on the sea! An extra sovereign now, brave fellow, a half-sovereign itself!" And when he left it was of less import than the cow going dry. Only one mourned him, the old dog. Only one remembered him, the half-blind badger hound, that dreamed of ancient hunting days.... And he would go down to his ship, heartbroken, when none was looking a mist of tears in his eyes,--he was not yet twenty-one,--but in a day or so that would pass, and the sea that was so strong would give him of its strength and heal him, so that after a few days he could stand up and say: "Well.... Huuh.... Well...."