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 angle to the lie of the slope deceptive, so that an extra branch of single line for the trucks became essential. And the money was insufficient; further advances became imperative, and, though readily forthcoming, involved more delay. The spirit of lonely peace and beauty departed from the Place, hiding its injured face among the moorland reaches further up. Obstruction, with turmoil and confusion at its back, rose up on every side to baffle him.

Though the advance was steady enough on the whole, and the difficulties were only such as most similar enterprises encounter, Eliot was conscious more and more of this sense of obstacles deliberately interposed. It all seemed so nicely calculated to cause the maximum of trouble and delay. The interference was so cunningly manoeuvred. He brought all his old energy and force to meet them, but there was ever this curious sense of advised and determined opposition that began to sap his confidence.

'More trouble, sir,' the foreman said one morning, when Eliot went down to view the work, unaccompanied as usual by Mánya. 'There seems no end to it.'

'What is it this time?' He abhorred these conversations now. It always seemed that Another stood behind his shoulder, listening.

'The clay has gone,' was the curious answer. He said it as though it had gone purposely to spite them like a living thing.

'Gone!' he exclaimed incredulously.

'Sunk away, gone deeper than we expected,' was the answer. The man shrugged his shoulders as though something puzzled him. 'A kind of subsidence come in the night,' he added gloomily.