Ah, yes!—­he must pay a call on Mrs Bosenna.  She had as good as engaged him by a promise, and, moreover, there was her cuff to be returned. . . .  Well, the visit must be paid this morning.  ’Bias would be arriving by the afternoon train; and, apart from that, when you’ve a daunting job that cannot be escaped, the wise course is to play the man and get it over.

Still, he could not well present himself at Rilla Farm before eleven o’clock—­say half-past eleven—­or noon even.  No, that would be too late; might suggest a hint of staying to dinner—­which God forbid!  He resolved upon eleven.

He grudged to lose the latter half of the morning; for the gardens—­his and Hunken’s—­had yet to be explored, and the rainwater cisterns in rear of the houses, and the back premises generally, and the patches where the cabbages grew.  Also (confound the woman!) he could well have spent an hour or two about the streets and the Quay, renewing old acquaintance.  The whole town had heard of his return, and there were scores of folk to remember him and bid him welcome.  They would chase away this feeling of forlornness, of being an alien. . . .  Strange that, wide awake though he was, it should continue to haunt him!

But Troy, on all save market mornings, is a slug-a-bed town; and even at nine o’clock, when he issued forth after an impatient breakfast, the streets wore an unkempt, unready, unsociable air.  Housewives were still beating mats, shopboys washing down windows; ash-buckets stood in the gutter-ways, by door and ope, awaiting the scavenger.

“These people want a Daylight Saving Bill,” thought Captain Cai, and somewhat disconsolately wheeled about, setting his face for the Rope Walk.  Here his spirits sensibly revived.  There had been rain in the night, but the wind had flown to the northward, and the sun was already scattering the clouds with promise of a fine day.  Cleansing airs played between the houses, the line of ash-buckets grew sparser, and the buckets—­for he had encountered the scavenger’s cart on the slope of the hill—­were empty now, albeit their owners showed no hurry to fetch them indoors.

A row of houses—­all erected since his young days—­still blocked the view of the harbour.  But just beyond them, where a roadway led down to the ferry, the exquisite scene broke upon him—­the harbour entrance, with the antique castles pretending to guard it; the vessels (his own amongst them) in the land-locked anchorage; the open sea beyond, violet blue to the morning under a steady off-shore breeze; white gulls flashing aloft, and, in the offing, a pair of gannets hunting above the waters.