The manager—­Jim Urquhart, grey-bearded, in a battered felt hat and a slouchy old tweed suit—­stood by the sorter’s table, his wide-ranging, vigilant eye suddenly fixed upon it.  As each fleece was brought up, shaken out, trimmed, tested with thumb and finger, rolled into a light bundle, inside out, and flung into one or another of the adjacent racks, he followed the process as if it were something new to him.  The shade of difference in the texture of the staple of one fleece as compared with another appeared of more concern to him than the absolute difference, which seemed to shout for notice, between Deborah Dalzell and the other features of the scene.

A snowy, lacy petticoat all but swept the greasy floor.  An equally spotless skirt, fresh from the laundry, gathered up in one strong pendant hand, gleamed like light against its background of greasy woodwork and greasy wool.  The majestic figure of the lady of Redford advanced towards him.  Her lord strolled behind her.  Often—­but not for many a long day—­had the vision of her beautiful face come to Jim in this fashion, a radiance upon prosaic business that it was not allowed to interfere with; now, for the first time, his eye avoided, his heart shrank from recognising it.

Then he lifted his gaze at last, for she was close beside him.  And what a ray of loving old-comradeship shone on him from those star-bright orbs of hers, undulled by the years that had lightly frosted her dark hair.  She put out her hand, and held it out until he had apologised for his greasy paw, and given it to her warm grasp.

“Why haven’t you been to see me—­to see us?” she asked him, smiling.  “Didn’t you know we came home last night?”

“I thought you might be tired—­or unpacking,” Jim lamely excused himself.  “But whenever it is convenient to you, Deb—­Mrs Dalzell—­I am always close by; I can come at any time.”

He looked at her husband.

“Claud, you remember Jim?”

It was so many years since the men had met that the question was not uncalled for.  They nodded to each other, across the enormous gulf that separated them, while Deb explained to her husband what an invaluable manager she had.  Jim had grown homelier and shabbier with his advancing years; Claud more and more exquisitely finished, until he now stood, in his carefully-careless costume—­his short, pointed beard the same tone of silver-grey as his flannel suit, his finely-chiselled features the hue of old ivory—­a perfect model of patrician ‘form’.  Only there was plenty of vigour still manifest in the bushman’s bony frame, while the man of the world wore a valetudinarian air, leaning on the arm of his regal, upright wife.

“Eh, isn’t it like old times!” she mused aloud, as her eyes roamed about the shed, where every sweating worker was finding time to gaze at her.  “I see some of the old faces—­there’s Harry Fox—­and old David—­ and isn’t that Keziah’s grandson?  I must go and speak to them.”