the back premises generally, and the patches where
the cabbages grew. Also (confound the woman!) he could well have spent
an hour or two about the streets and the Quay, renewing old
acquaintance. The whole town had heard of his return, and there were
scores of folk to remember him and bid him welcome. They would chase
away this feeling of forlornness, of being an alien. . . . Strange that,
wide awake though he was, it should continue to haunt him!

But Troy, on all save market mornings, is a slug-a-bed town; and even at
nine o'clock, when he issued forth after an impatient breakfast, the
streets wore an unkempt, unready, unsociable air. Housewives were still
beating mats, shopboys washing down windows; ash-buckets stood in the
gutter-ways, by door and ope, awaiting the scavenger.

"These people want a Daylight Saving Bill," thought Captain Cai, and
somewhat disconsolately wheeled about, setting his face for the Rope
Walk. Here his spirits sensibly revived. There had been rain in the
night, but the wind had flown to the northward, and the sun was already
scattering the clouds with promise of a fine day. Cleansing airs played
between the houses, the line of ash-buckets grew sparser, and the
buckets--for he had encountered the scavenger's cart on the slope of the
hill--were empty now, albeit their owners showed no hurry to fetch them
indoors.

A row of houses--all erected since his young days--still blocked the
view of the harbour. But just beyond them, where a roadway led down to
the ferry, the exquisite scene broke upon him--the harbour entrance,
with the antique castles pretending to guard it; the vessels (his own
amongst them) in the land-locked anchorage; the open sea beyond, violet
blue to the morning under a steady off-shore breeze; white gulls
flashing aloft, and, in the offing, a pair of gannets hunting above the
waters.

Captain Cai took no truck (as he would have said) in the beauties of
nature; but here was a scene he understood, and he began to feel at home
again. He halted, rested his elbows on a low wall and watched the
gannets at their evolutions--the poise, the terrific dive, the splash
clearly visible at more than a mile's distance. The wall on which he
leaned overhung a trim garden, gay with scentless flowers such as tulips
and late daffodils, and yet odorous--for early April has a few days
during which the uncurling leaf has all the fragrance of blossom: and
this was such a day, lustrous