He could tell that they were pressing behind him, staring past him into the room, he could almost hear their whispered exclamations of delight.
He turned to Mrs.Trenchard as though she must have perceived that he was not alone.

But she had noticed nothing; with another sharp turn of the wrist she had locked the door.
IV To-morrow was Christmas Eve: he had promised to spend Christmas with friends in Somerset.

Now he went to the little village post-office and telegraphed that he was detained; he felt at that moment as though he would never like to leave Clinton again.
The inn, the "Hearty Cow," was kept by people who were new to him--"foreigners, from up-country." The fat landlord complained to Seymour of the slowness of the Clinton people, that they never could be induced to see things to their own proper advantage.

"A dead-alive place _I_ call it," he said; "but still, mind you," he added, "it's got a sort of a 'old on one." From the diamond-paned windows of his bedroom next morning he surveyed a glorious day, the very sky seemed to glitter with frost, and when his window was opened he could hear quite plainly the bell on Trezent Rock, so crystal was the air.

He walked that morning for miles; he covered all his old ground, picking up memories as though he were building a pleasure-house.