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Marching home between the hawthorn towers of the hedgerow, Gervase's mind went back to an evening eighteen years ago, soon after the Alards' return to Conster. He had been Vicar of Leasan only a few months, and he saw himself standing in his new gown upon a sunlit lawn, smelling as he smelt now the scents of the warm reviving earth. His father had given a feast to celebrate the family's restoration, nine years after the King's, and a summer-tree had been set up, for all the villagers and country folk who had not seen one since the Rebellion.

They had waited a year after the death of Accepted Harman, so there was nothing unseemly in the festival or likely to upset those families who had always been friendly with the dispossessed Harmans and Douces. But Exalted, he remembered, had watched the proceedings with a sour face, and would not let his wife or children dance—not because he still mourned his brother or resented the loss of Conster to his family, but because he held dancing to be lascivious and a maypole but little less idolatrous than a cross. Gervase remembered how the poor little children had wanted to dance, and how when he had pleaded with their father they had had their first Scripture-quoting contest, bringing the daughter of Herodias and her impious prancing against the godly measure that King David trod before the Ark.