None in Hamley took such pride in David as did these two old men, who had loved him from a child, but had discreetly hidden their favour, save to each other.

Many times they had met and prayed together in the weeks when his life was in notorious danger in the Soudan.
As David walked through the streets of Heddington making for the open country, he was conscious of a new feeling regarding the place.

It was familiar, but in a new sense.

Its grimy, narrow streets, unlovely houses, with shut windows, summer though it was, and no softening influences anywhere, save here and there a box of sickly geraniums in the windows, all struck his mind in a way they had never done before.
A mile away were the green fields, the woods, the roadsides gay with flowers and shrubs-loveliness was but over the wall, as it were; yet here the barrack-like houses, the grey, harsh streets, seemed like prison walls, and the people in them prisoners who, with every legal right to call themselves free, were as much captives as the criminal on some small island in a dangerous sea.

Escape--where?
Into the gulf of no work and degradation?
They never lifted their eyes above the day's labour.