However, after a few years, he did return to England.  The cause of his return is irrelevant to the history, but I may say that it sprang from a conflict between the Five Towns temperament and the Trenton Union of Earthenware Operatives.  Such is the power of Unions in the United States that Toby, if he wished to remain under the Federal Flag, had either to yield or to starve.  He would not yield.  He changed his name and came to England; strolled calmly into the Crown Porcelain Works at Derby one day, and there recommenced his career as an artificer of earthenware.  He did well.  He could easily earn four pounds a week, and had no desires, save in the direction of fly-fishing—­not an expensive diversion.  He knew better than to marry.  He existed quietly; and one year trod on the heels of another, and carried him from thirty to forty and forty to fifty, and no one found out his identity, though there are several direct trains daily between Derby and Knype.

And now, owing to the death of a friend and a glass of beer, he was in Child Row, crossing the street towards the house whose ownership had caused him to quit it.

He knocked on the door with the handle of his umbrella.  There was no knocker; there never had been a knocker.  III

The door opened cautiously, as such doors in the Five Towns do, after a shooting of bolts and a loosing of chains; it opened to the extent of about nine inches, and Toby Hall saw the face of a middle-aged woman eyeing him.

‘Is this Mrs Hall’s?’ he asked sternly.

‘No.  It ain’t Mrs Hall’s.  It’s Mrs Tansley’s.’

‘I thowt—­’

The door opened a little wider.

‘That’s not you, Tobias?’ said the woman unmoved.

‘I reckon it is, though,’ replied Toby, with a difficult smile.

‘Bless us!’ exclaimed the woman.  The door oscillated slightly under her hand.  ‘Bless us!’ she repeated.  And then suddenly, ‘You’d happen better come in, Tobias.’

‘Aye!’ said Tobias.

And he entered.

‘Sit ye down, do,’ said his wife.  ’I thowt as you were dead.  They wrote and told me so.’

‘Aye!’ said Tobias.  ‘But I am na’.’

He sat down in an arm-chair near the old-fashioned grate, with its hobs at either side.  He was acquainted with that chair, and it had not appreciably altered since his departure.  The lastingness of furniture under fair treatment is astonishing.  This chair was uncomfortably in exactly the same spot where it had always been uncomfortable; and the same anti-macassar was draped over its uncompromising back.  Toby put his hat on the table, and leaned his umbrella against the chimney-piece.  His overcoat he retained.  Same table; same chimney-piece; same clock and ornaments on the chimney-piece!  But a different carpet on the floor, and different curtains before the window.

Priscilla bolted and chained the door, and then she too sat down.  Her gown was black, with a small black silk apron.  And she was stout, and she wore felt slippers and moved with the same gingerly care as Toby himself did.  She looked fully her years.  Her thin lips were firmer than ever.  It was indeed Priscilla.