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There were little blue flowers, speedwell and milkwort, growing plentifully in the rough grass around; Bowden noted, perhaps for the first time, those small flower luxuries of which Steer had deprived his son by sending him to where no grass grew.

He rose at length, retracing his slow-lifted tread up the lane, deep-soiled with the dried dung of his cows, where innumerable gnats danced level with the elder-blossom and the ash leaves. The village postman was leaving the yard when Bowden entered it. The man stopped in the doorway, and turned his bearded face and dark eyes blinking in the level sunlight.

“There’s a talegram for yu, Mist Bowden,” he said, and vanished.

“What’s that?” said Bowden dully, and passed in under the porch.

The ‘talegram’ lay unopened on the kitchen table, and Bowden stared at it. Very few such missives had come his way, perhaps not half a dozen in his fifty odd years. He took it up, handling it rather as he might have handled a fowl that would peck, and broke it open with his thumb.