That evening Felix came out to the old ‘fly,’ waiting to take him from Joyfields to Becket.  What a sky!  All over its pale blue a far-up wind had drifted long, rosy clouds, and through one of them the half-moon peered, of a cheese-green hue; and, framed and barred by the elm-trees, like some roseate, stained-glass window, the sunset blazed.  In a corner of the orchard a little bonfire had been lighted, and round it he could see the three small Trysts dropping armfuls of leaves and pointing at the flames leaping out of the smoulder.  There, too, was Tod’s big figure, motionless, and his dog sitting on its haunches, with head poked forward, staring at those red tongues of flame.  Kirsteen had come with him to the wicket gate.  He held her hand long in his own and pressed it hard.  And while that blue figure, turned to the sunset, was still visible, he screwed himself back to look.

They had been in painful conclave, as it seemed to Felix, all day, coming to the decision that those two young things should have their wish, marry, and go out to New Zealand.  The ranch of Cousin Alick Morton (son of that brother of Frances Freeland, who, absorbed in horses, had wandered to Australia and died in falling from them) had extended a welcome to Derek.  Those two would have a voyage of happiness—­see together the red sunsets in the Mediterranean, Pompeii, and the dark ants of men swarming in endless band up and down with their coal-sacks at Port Said; smell the cinnamon gardens of Colombo; sit up on deck at night and watch the stars. . . .  Who could grudge it them?  Out there youth and energy would run unchecked.  For here youth had been beaten!

On and on the old ‘fly’ rumbled between the shadowy fields.  ’The world is changing, Felix—­changing!’ Was that defeat of youth, then, nothing?  Under the crust of authority and wealth, culture and philosophy—­was the world really changing; was liberty truly astir, under that sky in the west all blood; and man rising at long last from his knees before the God of force?  The silent, empty fields darkened, the air gathered dewy thickness, and the old ‘fly’ rumbled and rolled as slow as fate.  Cottage lamps were already lighted for the evening meal.  No laborer abroad at this hour!  And Felix thought of Tryst, the tragic fellow—­the moving, lonely figure; emanation of these solitary fields, shade of the departing land!  One might well see him as that boy saw him, silent, dogged, in a gray light such as this now clinging above the hedgerows and the grass!

The old ‘fly’ turned into the Becket drive.  It had grown dark now, save for the half-moon; the last chafer was booming by, and a bat flitting, a little, blind, eager bat, through the quiet trees.  He got out to walk the last few hundred yards.  A lovely night, silent below her stars—­cool and dark, spread above field after field, wood on wood, for hundreds of miles on every side.  Night covering his native land.  The same silence had reigned