Something of the spirit of the scene enacted in the study had conveyed itself even to Alf awaiting in the road outside, Ern's bag at his feet. He was blinking when his brother, blowing his nose, joined him. Ern glanced at the green rampart of the Downs rising like a wall at the end of the road, and huge Shadow Coombe where the lambs were folded in March and where once he had passed a night in the shepherd's hut. Ern waved to them and Beech-hangar beyond. "Good-bye, old Downs!" he called. "You and me been good old pals!" Then they set off for the bus at Billing's Corner, neither speaking, neither wishing to, Alf carrying his brother's bag. Both youths were slight and colt-like, yet with loose unshackled limbs; Ern rather smart, Alf distinctly shabby. The Rector, tall and titupping, emerged from his gate as they passed, but refrained from seeing them. He did not approve of the two Caspar boys--in the main because they were the sons of their father. Canon Willcocks aped--successfully enough--the walk and deportment of a thoroughbred weed. His face--which was aquiline--inspired his pose, which was aristocratic and satirical. His solitary hero was Louis Napoleon, whom he had worshipped from childhood. And he bore himself habitually as one who is too fine for the coarse world in which he dwells perforce. The two brothers nudged each other as he stalked by. Then they climbed to the box-seat of the old bus and established themselves beside the driver. "Where away then?" he asked, seeing the bag. "Off to see the world, Mr. Huggett," answered Ern, already cheering up. "Goin for the week-end to the North Pole, me and Alf!" The bus jolted down the street, past the long-backed church with its mighty tower looking down upon the Moot as it had done for five centuries, and stopped opposite the _Star_. Ern for the last time touched the old coaching bell with the driver's whip. As it clanged sonorously, a window in the Manor-house opened. Ern looked up to see Mrs. Trupp and her daughter, a fair flapper now, waving at him with eyes that smiled and shone. "Good-bye!" they called. "Good luck!" Saffrons Croft was white with cricketers as they passed. The honest thump of the ball upon the bat, the recumbent groups under the elms, even the imperious voice of Mr. Pigott umpiring on Lower Pitch, moved Ern strangely. Alf's presence somehow helped him to be hard. At the Central Station the boys got down. They paced the platform, waiting for the train. Alf babbled at large, his brother paying little heed. "Be the making of you!" Alf was saying in his rather patronizing way. "See the world!--knock about!--come home a full-blown Hammer-man with a fat pension and a V.C. on your chest and a Colonel's commission! And we'll all meet you at the stytion with a brass band playing _See the Conquering Hero Comes!_ and be proud of you. I'd come along meself for company, only I'm too small." Ern roused from his dreams.