He asked a policeman when the bus for Old Town ran. "There she is," said the man, pointing. "On the bounce!" Just across the street, under the particular plane-tree the starlings haunted of evenings, where in the past old Huggett in his bottle-green coat would wait indefinitely with his mouldy pair of browns, there stood a gaudy motor-bus, decked on top. A spruce conductor was pulling the bell sharply; and a board on which were printed the starting-times hung from a neighbouring lamp. It was all very precise, powerful, and efficient. Ernie was not sure whether he liked it or not. But he had little time to think. This mechanical monster was not the old gentlemanly horse-bus with its easy tolerance. It gave no law and knew no mercy. It was swift and terrible; and its heart was of the same stuff as its engines. He crossed the road and leapt on to the great lurching thing. Carelessly it bore him along the Old Road to Lewes and then swung away under the Chestnuts into Water Lane. Here at least nothing had changed but the vehicle that carried him. On his left was Saffrons Croft, just as of old, with its group of splendid elms and the Downs seen through the screen of them; in front on the hill, above the roofs of Old Town, the church-tower with its squat spire, bluff against a background of green. Two ladies were walking down the hill, a middle-aged and gracious mother, escorted by a tall daughter. Ernie's neighbour nudged him confidentially. "Mrs. Trupp," he said. Ernie leaned over. Except for the silver in her hair, his god-mother had altered little; but he would hardly have recognized in the stately young woman who walked at her side the flapper who had waved him good-bye from the nursery-window years before. His neighbour was conveying to him information about the great surgeon. "He's our greatest man by far. Mr. Trupp _of Beachbourne_. They come from all parts to him. He saved the Tsar of Dobrudja--when all the rest had taken to their prayers." "Ah," said Ernie, "I think I ave eard of im." The bus, for all its rushing manners of a parvenu, stopped opposite the _Star_; but the old beam across the road was gone. Ernie felt himself aggrieved, and complained to the conductor as he got down. "Well, you didn't want your head took off every time, did you?" said that unsympathetic worthy. Ernie strolled up Church Street, living his past over again. Here at least he found the rich, slow atmosphere he had expected. There was the long-backed church standing massive and noble as of old on its eminence above the Moot; beneath it in the hollow the brown roof of the Quaker Meeting-house; and on his left the little ironmonger's shop outside which Alf had seen Mrs. Pigott and her dog Sharkie on the fatal day they sacked the walnut-tree.