He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat top the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the landscape.

He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields.  He was, indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection.  The air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one, a remarka....  His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and thought:  Odd!  He—­ah!  They were waving to him from the bottom!  He put up his hand, and moved it more than once.  They were active—­the prospect was remar....  His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell to the right.  It remained there; he was asleep.

And asleep, a sentinel on the—­top of the rise, he appeared to rule over this prospect—­remarkable—­like some image blocked out by the special artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of mind over matter!

And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence, their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world—­all these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of the rise.

But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far, into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to see what they were doing down there in the copse—­in the copse where the spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching; to watch Irene’s eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the spring.  And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with his mushroom-and-silver coat untouched by the rain or dew; watching over Irene’s bent head, and the soft look of her pitying eyes; and over that young man’s head, gazing at her so hard, so strangely.  Walking on with them, too, across the open space where a wood-cutter had been at work, where the bluebells were trampled down, and a trunk had swayed and staggered down from its gashed stump.  Climbing it with them, over, and on to the very edge of the copse, whence there stretched an undiscovered country, from far away in which came the sounds, ‘Cuckoo-cuckoo!’

Silent, standing with them there, and uneasy at their silence!  Very queer, very strange!

Then back again, as though guilty, through the wood—­back to the cutting, still silent, amongst the songs of birds that never ceased, and the wild scent—­hum! what was it—­like that herb they put in—­back to the log across the path....