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she did. He drew his bitten fingers away and sucked at them dreamily. He struggled to his feet and catching her under the shoulder blades lifted her up. The feeling of her body in his hands excited his senses but he only gave her one savage hug, pressing her fiercely against him, his long bony hands gripping the front of her thighs. Then he let her go with an abruptness that almost flung her on the grass.
    “It's time to see the fish if we're not going to miss the funeral,” he said.
    They both picked up their sticks after that and went forward.
    John Crow had forgotten how separated from the farm-house the mill-pond was. He had just begun to feel those fears of dogs and angry farmers common to all tramps and gipsies. But he was to be spared any agitation of this kind. The Mill stood by itself; and the face which it turned to the mill-pond was vacant of windows. It was a queer blind face, under its heavy East Anglian tiles. Mary and he soon found themselves leaning over the low stone parapet and staring into the huge deep pool. . . .
    “It's the same!” “I remember!” “I remember!”
    Their voices came simultaneously; and for one flash of a fragment of a second something in them held a wind-blown taper to a scene lost and buried more than twenty years. But from the depths of John Crow's mind another image suddenly mounted up and another memory. Tom Barter! Tom Barter! It was more than once he had come here with Tom, a boy of his own age, the son of the Squire of Didlington; but the episode came back now with an overwhelming rush. What a heap of information about fish and about fishing Tom had known! And he had got the boat up those shallows and past the dam too ... got it right into the “big river,” near Didlington bridge! John became very silent now, staring at the water and thinking of Tom. It seemed very curious, looking back at that far-off day, that there should ever have been any boy so strong, so capable, so extraordinarily nice to him as Tom Barter had been. He and Tom were exactly the same age. What had become of him?
    “On* one of those days,” he announced now to Mary, “I came here with Tom Barter. Do you remember Tom, Mary? He was probably the best friend I shall ever have!”
    Their four hands were pressed against the parapet, palms down, and their two heads were close together. Mary moved one of her hands a little till it just touched one of his.
    “Ye . . . es, I . . . think ... I do,” she replied musingly. In her heart she said to herself, “I won't tell him now that I know him quite well and that he's working for Cousin Philip at Glastonburyf”
    “Oh, you don't remember him if you don't see him clearly Vs cried John emphatically. ”Look at that big one, Mary, look at him rising there! It was that fish that brought him back to my mind. Directly I saw that big one I thought of Tom. He got the boat right up the dam that day, Mary, Tom did."
    “I . . . don't . . . think ... 7 was there that day,” said Mary in a low voice. And in her heart she saw two little boys standing exactly where they two were standing at this minute. Could it have been Tom, and not her at all, that he had hugged at the bottom of the boat? Boys no doubt are often shameless on long, hot afternoons!
    “Right over the dam. . • .” went on John Crow. “I can see his face now as he pulled at it. He must have taken off his stockings. The dam was all slippery with moss.”
    “Damn the dam!” cried Mary in her heart. But she said quietly, “I think I remember him in church, John. He used to sit in the front pew. Or if it wasn't your friend it was a great, big, strong-looking boy with curly hair and a freckly face. Yes, I think it must have been Tom.”
    “Tom hadn't freckles,” said John Crow with a faint touch of peevishness. There arose in his masculine brain an obscure annoyance with himself for having brought that boy into it at all. His vague thought, thus limned in the darkness, was that certain emotions