e flat fields low and
straight as a dyke.

Beyond the hamlet there is a little spit of land, and beyond the spit of
land a narrow creek.

Half a mile up the creek the path that follows it breaks off into the
open country, and thins to a track across five fields. It struggles to
the gateway of a low, red-roofed, red-brick farm, and ends there. The
farm stands alone, and the fields around it are bare to the skyline.
Three tall elms stand side by side against it, sheltering it from the
east, marking its humble place in the desolate land. To the west a broad
bridle-path joins the road to Fawlness.

Majendie had a small yacht moored in the creek, near where the path
breaks off to Three Elms Farm. Once, sometimes twice, a week, Majendie
came to Three Elms Farm. Sometimes he came for the week-end, more often
for a single night, arriving at six in the evening, and leaving very
early the next day. In winter he took the train to Hesson, tramped seven
miles across country, and reached the farm by the Fawlness road. In
summer the yacht brought him from "Hannay & Majendie's" dock to Fawlness
creek. At Three Elms Farm he found Maggie waiting for him.

This had been going on, once, sometimes twice a week, for nearly three
years, ever since he had rented the farm and brought Maggie from Scale to
live there.

The change had made the details of his life difficult. It called for all
the qualities in which Majendie was most deficient. It necessitated
endless vigilance, endless harassing precautions, an unnatural secrecy.
He had to make Anne believe that he had taken to yachting for his health,
that he was kept out by wind and weather, that the obligations and
complexities of business, multiplying, tied him, and claimed his time.
Maggie had to be hidden away, in a place where no one came, lodged with
people whose discretion he could trust. Pearson, the captain of his
yacht, a close-mouthed, close-fisted Yorkshireman, had a wife as reticent
as himself. Pearson and his wife and their son Steve knew that their
living depended on their secrecy. And cupidity apart, the three were
devoted to their master and his mistress. Pearson and his son Steve were
acquainted with the ways of certain gentlemen of Scale, who sailed their
yachts from port to port, up and down the Yorkshire coast. Pearson was a
man who observed life dispassionately. He asked no questions and answered
none.

It was six o'clock in the evening, early in October, just three y