I had left them to patch up their little quarrel.  But the scene stuck in my memory, and now, as I walked down the platform towards the single figure on the bench, I wondered, amusedly, if the woman had at length taken the ride alone, and if the procrastinating husband sat here to welcome her back.

As I drew near, I took note of his clothes for the first time.  There was no white dust in the creases to-day.  In fact, he wore the workhouse suit.

I sat down beside him, and asked if he remembered a certain small boy who had used to draw dace out of his mill-pond.  With some difficulty he recalled my features, and by decrees let out the story of his life during the last ten years.

He and his wife had fought along in their new house, hiding their discomfort from each other, and abiding the slow degrees by which their dwelling should change into a home.  But before that change was worked, the woman fell under a paralytic stroke, and their savings, on which they had just contrived to live, threatened to be swallowed up by the doctor’s bill.  After considering long, the miller wrote off to his only son, a mechanic in the Plymouth Dockyard, and explained the case.  This son was a man of forty or thereabouts, was married, and had a long family.  He could not afford to take the invalid into his house for nothing; but his daughters would look after their grandmother and she should have good medical care as well, if she came on a small allowance.

“So the only thing to be done, sir, was for my old woman to go.”

“And you—?”

“Oh, I went into the ‘House.’  You see, there wasn’ enough for both, livin’ apart.”

I stared down the line to the spot where the mill-wheel had hummed so pleasantly, and the compassionate sentence I was about to utter withered up and died on my lips.

“But to-day—­Oh, to-day, sir—­”

“What’s happening to-day?”

“She’s comin’ down to see me for an hour or two; an’ I’ve got a holiday to meet her.  ‘Tis our Golden Weddin’, sir.”

“But why are you meeting her at this station instead of Tregarrick?  She can’t walk, and you have no horse and trap; whereas there’s always a ’bus at Tregarrick.”

“Well, you see, sir, there’s a very tidy little cottage below where they sell ginger-beer, an’ I’ve got a whack o’ vittles in the basket here, besides what William is bringin’—­William an’ his wife are comin’ down with her.  They’ll take her back by the last train up; an’ I thought, as ‘twas so little a while, an’ the benches here are so comfortable, we’d pass our day ’pon the platform here.  ’Tis within sight o’ the old home, too, or ruther o’ the spot where the old home used to be:  an’ though ‘tis little notice she seems to take o’ things, one never can tell if poor creatures in that state hain’t pleased behind all their dazed looks.  What do you think, sir?”

The whistle sounded up the valley, and mercifully prevented my answer.  I saw the woman for an instant as she was brought out of the train and carried to the bench.  She did not recognise the man she had married fifty years before:  but as we moved out of the station, he was sitting beside her, his face transfigured with a solemn joy.