In the train again he sank back in a kind of pleasant trance. Two country-men in his carriage were talking in the old ca-a-ing speech--_So cardingly I saays to herrr_.... Their undulating voices rocked him to sleep. He woke to find himself in Lewes, and his eyes resting on the massif of Mount Caburn. The train wandered eastwards under the Downs, past Furrel Beacon, athwart the opening of the Ruther Valley. The Long Man of Wilmington stared bleakly at him from the flanks of hills that seemed sometimes scarred and old and worn, at others rich with the mystery of youth. The train ran through Polefax, where the line to Romney Marsh turns off. Then with a belated effort at sprightliness it hurried through the sprawling outposts of Beachbourne. The town had grown greatly, overspreading the foothills towards Ratton and the woods of the Decoy and skirmishing across the marshes beyond the gasworks, which, when he left, had marked the uttermost bounds of civilization. CHAPTER XXII OLD TOWN When Ern got out of the train on to the very platform where Alf, six years before, had prophesied his return in glory, nothing much happened. True, the conditions were not quite as Alf had foretold. Rather the reverse. Whereas it was a dapper young clerk who had left Beachbourne, it was a solid working-man who returned to it; one who by his clothes, boots, hands, hair, and even walk, testified that he was of those who bear on their shoulders the burden of our industrial civilization. And that perhaps was why the promised brass-band was conspicuous by its absence, and there were present no fathers of the city expanding ample paunches preparatory to delivering an address of welcome to the returning soldier. Instead there was upon the platform one unkempt porter, who took his ticket very casually, and when asked by Ern whether he recognized him, replied with more honesty than tact that he didn't know but thought not. "See, I sees so many," he remarked apologetically. "I'm Ernie Caspar," said Ernie, noting with critical military eye that the other did not seem to have had his hair cut since last they met. "I was at the Moot School along o you. Aaron Huggett, aren't it?" The porter's face betrayed a flicker of sardonic interest. "I expagt you'll be Alf Caspar's brother," he said. "That's it," Ernie answered, a thought sourly. Back in Beachbourne he was not himself; he was just his younger brother's brother, it seemed. Things were not quite as he had expected. Everywhere was a subtle change of atmosphere. Beside the book-stall now stood a sentry-box with glass doors. In it a man with something to his ear was talking to himself. Ernie felt somehow disconsolate. Outside the station, in Cornfield Road, he paused and took in the scene. There was more traffic than of old, and it was swifter. In the country from which he came the ox was still the principal motive-power upon the roads: here clearly horses were becoming out of date.