ine view from here," he remarked; "you haven't such a thing
as a chair?"

A chair was brought him from Bosinney's tent.

"You go down," he said blandly; "you two! I'll sit here and look at the
view."

He sat down by the oak tree, in the sun; square and upright, with one
hand stretched out, resting on the nob of his cane, the other planted on
his knee; his fur coat thrown open, his hat, roofing with its flat top
the pale square of his face; his stare, very blank, fixed on the
landscape.

He nodded to them as they went off down through the fields. He was,
indeed, not sorry to be left thus for a quiet moment of reflection. The
air was balmy, not too much heat in the sun; the prospect a fine one, a
remarka.... His head fell a little to one side; he jerked it up and
thought: Odd! He--ah! They were waving to him from the bottom! He put
up his hand, and moved it more than once. They were active--the prospect
was remar.... His head fell to the left, he jerked it up at once; it fell
to the right. It remained there; he was asleep.

And asleep, a sentinel on the--top of the rise, he appeared to rule over
this prospect--remarkable--like some image blocked out by the special
artist, of primeval Forsytes in pagan days, to record the domination of
mind over matter!

And all the unnumbered generations of his yeoman ancestors, wont of a
Sunday to stand akimbo surveying their little plots of land, their grey
unmoving eyes hiding their instinct with its hidden roots of violence,
their instinct for possession to the exclusion of all the world--all
these unnumbered generations seemed to sit there with him on the top of
the rise.

But from him, thus slumbering, his jealous Forsyte spirit travelled far,
into God-knows-what jungle of fancies; with those two young people, to
see what they were doing down there in the copse--in the copse where the
spring was running riot with the scent of sap and bursting buds, the song
of birds innumerable, a carpet of bluebells and sweet growing things, and
the sun caught like gold in the tops of the trees; to see what they were
doing, walking along there so close together on the path that was too
narrow; walking along there so close that they were always touching; to
watch Irene's eyes, like dark thieves, stealing the heart out of the
spring. And a great unseen chaperon, his spirit was there, stopping with
them to look at the little furry corpse of a mole, not dead an hour, with
his mushro