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 ''thinkin' strange about you and 'ow you'll pull along with your kind friends. That nice gentleman sent a telegram as he promised to and says you pull finely along. Hopin' you really are better. But dear boy, if you find you can give me just a word on paper say'in that hear there is no course for worryin' about your health, then I'm happy because, dear boy, you'm always in my thoughts and I love you fine and wish to God I could have made everything easier up along in thiccy Bucket Lane. I go from hear by road to Cornwall and Treliss. I'm expecting to find work there. Dear boy, don't forget me and see me again one day and write a letter. They are getting too much into their bellies and making the devil's own noise. There is Thunder coming the air is that still over the roof of the barn and the road's dead white. Dear Boy, I am your friend,'' Stephen Brant.

The candles blew a little in the breeze from the open window and the lighted shadows ran flickering in silver lines, along the dark floor. Peter stood holding the letter in his hand, looking out on to the black square of sky; the lights of the barges swung down the river and he could hear, very faintly, the straining of ropes and the turning of some mysterious wheel.

He saw Stephen—the great head, the flowing beard, the huge body—and then the inn with the thunder coming over the hill, and then, beyond that Treliss gleaming with its tiers of lights, above the breast of the sea. And from here, from this wide Embankment, down to that sea, there stretched, riding over hills, bending into valleys, always white and hard and stony, the road

For an instant he felt as though the studio, the lights, the comforts were holding him like a prison—

“It's a letter from Stephen Brant,” he said, turning back from the window. “He seems well and happy—”

“Where is he?”

“Eating bread and cheese at an inn somewhere—on the road down to Cornwall.”

On the following Tuesday “Reuben Hallard” was