had never known before. The loneliness
that he had felt at Liskane Station was intensified, so that he felt
like a stranger who was seeing his father, or his mother, or aunt,
or sisters for the first time. Everything about him emphasised the
loneliness: the slow evening light that was stealing into the sky,
the sound of some machine in the farm-house turning with a melancholy
rhythmic whine, a voice calling in the fields, the rumble of the sea,
the twittering of birds in the garden trees, the bark of a dog far, far
away, and, through them all, the sense that the world was sinking down
into silence, and that all the sounds were slipping away, like visitors
hurrying from the park before the gates are shut; he stood there,
listening, caught into a life that was utterly his own and had no share
with any other. He looked around and saw that they were all going into
the house, that Jim and Mr. Monk were busy with the boxes, and that no
one was aware of him. He knew what he wanted.

He slipped across the court, and dropped into the black cavernous hole
of the farther barn. At first the darkness stopped him; but he knew his
way, found the steps that led up to the loft, and was soon perched high
behind a little square window that was now blue and gold against the
velvety blackness behind him. This was his favourite spot in all the
farm. Here, all the year, they stored the apples, and the smell of the
fruit was thick in the air, sweet and strong, clinging about every fibre
of the place, so that you could not disturb a strand nor a stone without
sending some new drift of the scent up against your nostrils. All the
year after his first visit, Jeremy had been longing to smell that smell
again, and now he knelt up against the window, drinking it in. With his
eyes he searched the horizon. From here you could see the garden with
the sun-dial, the fields beyond, the sudden dip with the trees at the
edge of it bent crossways by the wind, and there, in such a cup as one's
hands might form, just beyond, was the sea...

He stared as though his eyes would start from his head. Behind him was
the cloudy smoke of the apple-scent; in front of him the sun was sinking
towards the dark elms. Soon the trees would catch the sun and hide it;
the galleon cloud that had been over them as they drove was new banked
in red and gold across the horizon; birds slowly, lazily fled to their
homes.

He heard someone call, "Jeremy! Jeremy!" With a last gaze he