A movement of Gerda, though she still remained asleep, broke up the current of his fancies, and he pulled out his watch.

Damn! It was time for him to start now, if he was to reach Mr. Urquhart’s house at the accustomed hour.

“I won’t have tea with him ,” he thought. “I’ll have tea at the Otters’. Then I’ll find out if Mattie and Olwen are still all right there.”

He rose to his feet. From the hushed indrawn beauty of the hour he gathered up new strength for the burden of human fate he seemed destined to carry.

Fragment by fragment he collected what was over from their lunch and put it back in Gerda’s basket, prodding into the soft earth of a molehill, with the end of his stick, the bits of paper in which those things had been tied up.