Then
he turned down the lane, and stood leaning on the orchard gate-grey
skeleton of a gate, as then. A black pig even was wandering in there
among the trees. Was it true that twenty-six years had passed, or had
he dreamed and awakened to find Megan waiting for him by the big apple
tree? Unconsciously he put up his hand to his grizzled beard and brought
himself back to reality. Opening the gate, he made his way down through
the docks and nettles till he came to the edge, and the old apple tree
itself. Unchanged! A little more of the greygreen lichen, a dead branch
or two, and for the rest it might have been only last night that he had
embraced that mossy trunk after Megan's flight and inhaled its woody
savour, while above his head the moonlit blossom had seemed to breathe
and live. In that early spring a few buds were showing already; the
blackbirds shouting their songs, a cuckoo calling, the sunlight bright
and warm. Incredibly the same-the chattering trout-stream, the narrow
pool he had lain in every morning, splashing the water over his flanks
and chest; and out there in the wild meadow the beech clump and the
stone where the gipsy bogie was supposed to sit.
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