As he stood, stricken dumb by his wife’s nearness, but on the edge of passionate revolt he became conscious of a peculiar change in his surroundings. Silence fell, a thick silence like a wall, a silence that shut out the cackle of a hen in the yard and the distant baa-ing that came irregularly from the hillside. The man was alone behind this wall of soundlessness, shut away by it from the homely noises of the indoor and the out. When it had lasted for a bewildering second, it was succeeded by a faint far-off sound. The sound came out of a red distance and grew rapidly louder, resolving itself at last into the regular tap-tap of a hammer which is being used for knocking in nails. This hammering was to Byron a familiar sound. It had been heard by him at other times of stress and strain, at other moments when raging passions seemed about to drive him over some dark verge. The sound was arresting. It went as he well knew with flashes of vision, during which he would see a piece of light wood and the glint of brass-headed tacks. As the wood appeared out of the white mist which surrounded him, Byron passed into another state of consciousness. His mind, abruptly disconnected, was filled with a queer eagerness and curiosity. His wife, Gray, Wastralls, everything, were momentarily forgotten. What was it, this knocking? No carpenter was at work in the houses and courts; and the wood too, a full curve narrowing to an angle, was a curious shape. He stared about him, seeking an explanation and his eye fell on the girl at her work. "Did you ’ear?" he said, turning on her a face from which the tide of emotion had ebbed. Gray, thankful for the respite which had followed her aunt’s entry, had seized the pats and, with feverish industry was cutting pounds and half pounds off the mass of butter. "I heard Aunt S’bina in the kitchen," she answered coldly. "I wasn’t speaking of ’er. I meant the knockin’." "What knocking?" "I didn’t know as the mason was comin’ to-day to put up the new pigs’ ’ouse?" "He isn’t coming till after Christmas." "Well, I’m sure I ’eard some one ’ammerin’ in nails." She shook her head. "I didn’t hear it." The noise of dishes being piled together on the breakfast table caught Byron’s attention. He glanced at Gray and the sight of youth, with a blush on the hot cheek, a suggestion of tears on the long lashes, was to him as the opening of a door. He came out of his preoccupation and the knocking either died away or was forgotten. Forgotten, too, were his rage and disappointment. "What’s she doin’ out o’ bed so early for?" "I’m going into Stowe with the butter and there’s a lot to do." "’Oo yer gwine with?" asked Byron, instantly on the alert. "With Jim." "You needn’t go." He was reluctant to have her out of his reach, even for a morning. He wanted her at home under his eye. He was going to renew his pleading as soon as the moment was auspicious. "Rosevear can take that in." "I want to go to-day."