At last the little man outstripped him altogether, and feeling that he had lost all hope, Edwin gave a cry. When he cried out the whole hurrying crowd melted away, the noise of their padding footsteps left a clear patch of silence (it was like that) and a puff of cool, thin air blew suddenly right into his nostrils. He thought, “I’m not going to be late after all. . . . Why didn’t they tell me that I was going to Uffdown?” There was no air like that in the world. He drank it down in gulps as a horse drinks water. “Eddie, you’ll choke yourself,” his mother said. . . . “The light won’t last much longer.” “But why should it last, darling?” he replied. “You’ve got to look over there,” she said, “in the west. You see that level ridge dropping suddenly? Well, it’s the third farm from the end. Do you see?” “Yes, darling, I can see it quite clearly. . . .” And he did see it. A long building of bluish stone with small windows set flush in the walls and no dripstones save one above the oak doorway. Not a soul to be seen. It looked as if the place had been deserted by living creatures for many years. “I can see it,” he said, “but I don’t think anybody lives there.” “But you can see it?” she asked him eagerly. “Can you see the little bedroom window on the left—the third from the end—quite a little window?” It was difficult to see, for, after all, it was more than a hundred miles away, and all the time that he was looking, the streamers of cloud kept rolling down from the darens on the mountain and drenching the whole scene in mist. “Eddie . . . there’s not much time,” she pleaded. “Do tell me.” “Yes,” he said. “I can see the window you mean.” She sighed. “I’m so glad, Eddie. I did want to show it you.” “But why were you in such a hurry?” “It was my last chance of showing it to you.” “Whatever do you mean, darling?” She turned her face away. Now it was quite dark. “I’m really dreaming,” he thought, “and this is a sort of stage on which they can do lightning tricks like that.” But there was no doubt about it being Uffdown. All round the sky the pit-fires of the black-country were flickering out. And though he couldn’t see her face, he could feel her soft hand in his. “At any rate, I’ve written . . .” she said at last. That was the sentence which he carried in his mind when he awoke. A letter. But she didn’t usually write to him before Sunday, and it was now only Saturday. Yet, when he came into Hall for breakfast a letter was lying on his plate. There was something so strange about the whole business that he was almost afraid to open it. He had a sudden, awful intuition that she was dead. Ridiculous, of course, for dead people didn’t write letters. Smiling at himself, yet scarcely reassured, he opened the letter and read it.