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Before Richard Milne came to the house he saw crossing the yard in the rear a flapping, overalled, small figure of a man, carrying a pair of dripping swill-pails. He waved, going forward without setting down his club-bag. It was Carson Hymerson, who went on to the swill-barrels and dipped the pails, heaving them out with a swish of water whitened by the admixture of chopped grain, and vegetable refuse curling over the rims.

'Just time supper, have good trip out? Hogs here they know it's time for supper. 'Spose you're glad to get away to the country once 'nawhile, how long you goin' to stay?' Hymerson said all this apparently without breath, and with the automatic and evenly-timed swiftness of a phonographic record turned at twice its normal speed. It was just his way, Richard remembered people said, as he shook hands with him. The farmer was over fifty, but still his ruddy, hard face, tinged to brass colour by tan, was unchanged by wrinkles, knobby as ever as to chin, nose, cheek-bones, and saltily blue of eye. 'Well, Missus'll want to see you better go in supper, I'll be there right now.'