With the fluty song beguiling him, he left the road and walked by the banks of the Broad Beck, until his bathing pool shone out among the birches. He saw himself mirrored dimly in the water, and the blurred image appeared to him as the true presentment of the thing he was, vague and incomplete, the rough shape his soul must perfect. The trees, in their drooping, veiled the fading light and curtained Alexander from the rest of the world, but he felt the Blue Hill behind him and fancied he could hear its breathing. He had meant to take the bath that was always like a new baptism into the life of the hills, but the shadowy form prayed him not to shatter it, and the hanging stillness of the wood forbade disturbance, so he shouldered the knapsack he had laid aside, and treading softly, struck across the fields for home. He found Janet sitting on the horse-block. "You're here!" she said. "What way did you come?" "By the beck. The water drew me." "And I've been listening for the sound of your feet on the road. More than an hour I've been here." "Where's my mother?" "Over the hills, somewhere, after that man of hers. He's like a bad child: runs for the pleasure he gets in seeing her follow, I believe." "Was he drunk?" he asked, and looking round, he saw a tragedy in every shadow. "He'd been drinking. She sent for me." His look sharpened. "For the first time?" "The third," she owned. "It's like that?" "You see, there've been long years of it." "I know! Do I not know!" "He slept till morning, but when the light came he went, and she after him. It's oftenest at night he goes, and then she cannot always follow. It's bad, Alexander. You'll not be leaving her again? Or will you?" He crossed the rutted lane and leaned on the wall. Here was the solving of his problem ready to his hand as he had foretold, but now he was rebellious. He stared across the field to where the birches stood about his pool, and he saw the brilliance of his future sadden and fade as though a star had drowned itself there, in the water among the trees. He made a movement as if to follow and bring it back, yet he stayed by the wall: his hands gripped the stones, but his heart had gone after the glowing treasure, lost and sunken, and as yet he had no wish to kindle the little rushlight of his faith, blown out by his own gasping breath.