ain.

On being set down at the Dibbledean Station, Mat lingered a little and
looked about him, just as he had lingered and looked on the occasion of
his first visit. He subsequently took the same road to the town which he
had then taken; and, on gaining the church, stopped, as he had formerly
stopped, at the churchyard-gate.

This time, however, he seemed to have no intention of passing the
entrance--no intention, indeed, of doing anything, unless standing
vacantly by the gate, and mechanically swinging it backwards and
forwards with both his hands, can be considered in the light of an
occupation. As for the churchyard, he hardly looked at it now. There
were two or three people, at a little distance, walking about among
the graves, who it might have been thought would have attracted his
attention; but he never took the smallest notice of them. He was
evidently meditating about something, for he soon began to talk to
himself--being, like most men who have passed much of their time in
solitude, unconsciously in the habit of thinking aloud.

"I wonder how many year ago it is, since she and me used to swing
back'ards and for'ards on this," he said, still pushing the gate slowly
to and fro. "The hinges used to creak then. They go smooth enough now.
Oiled, I suppose." As he said this, he moved his hands from the bar on
which they rested, and turned away to go on to the town; but stopped,
and walking back to the gate, looked attentively at its hinges--"Ah," he
said, "not oiled. New."

"New," he repeated, walking slowly towards the High Street--"new since
my time, like everything else here. I wish I'd never come back--I wish
to God I'd never come back!"

On getting into the town, he stopped at the same place where he had
halted on his first visit to Dibbledean, to look up again, as he had
looked then, at the hosier's shop which had once belonged to Joshua
Grice. Here, those visible and tangible signs and tokens which he
required to stimulate his sluggish memory, were not very easy to
recognize. Though the general form of his father's old house was
still preserved, the re-painting and renovating of the whole front had
somewhat altered it, in its individual parts, to his eyes. He looked up
and down at the gables, and all along from window to window; and shook
his head discontentedly.

"New again here," he said. "I can't make out for certain which winder it
was Mary and me broke between us, when I come away from school, the