be another Peter coming back, maybe. Up along they'll change yer."

"But never me and you, Steve. I shall love you always."

The man seized him almost fiercely by the shoulders and looked him in the
face. "Promise me that, boy," he said, "promise me that. Yer most all
I've got now. But I'm a fool to ask yer--of course yer'll change. I'm an
ignorant fool."

They were standing in the middle of one of Stephen's brown ploughed fields,
and the cold, sharp day was drawing to a close as the mist stole up from
the ground and the dim sun sank behind the hedgerows.

Peter in the school years that followed always had this picture of Stephen
standing in the middle of his field--Stephen's rough, red brown clothes,
his beard that curled a little, his brown corduroys that smelt of sheep and
hay, the shining brass buttons of his coat, his broad back and large brown
hands, his mild blue eyes and nose suddenly square at the end where it
ought to have been round--this Stephen Brant raised from the very heart
of the land, something as strong and primitive as the oaks and corn and
running stream that made his background.

Stephen suddenly caught up Peter and kissed him so that the boy cried out.
Then he turned abruptly and left him, and Peter did not see him again.

He said his farewells to the town, tenderly and gravely--the cobbled
streets, the dear market-place, and the Tower, The Bending Mule (here there
were farewells to be said to Mr. and Mrs. Figgis and old Moses); the wooden
jetty, and the fishing-boats--then the beach and the caves and the sea....