Silver and Joses went back to Cuckmere by the same train from Brighton.
The young man was well-established in a first-class smoker, and the train was about to start when the fat man came puffing along the platform. He was very hot; and out of his pocket bulged a brown paper parcel. The paper had burst and the head of a wooden mallet was exposed.
Silver, quiet in his corner, remarked that mallet.
That night he took a round of the stable-buildings before he went to bed, as his custom had been of late. There was nobody stirring but Maudie, meandering around like a ghost who did not feel well.
He went to the back of the Lads' Barn, and looked across the Paddock Close. A light in the window of a cottage shone out solitary in the darkness.
It was the cottage in which Joses lived, and the light came from an upper window.
Silver strolled along the back of the stable-buildings toward it.
Under Boy's window he paused, as was his wont.
A light within showed that the girl was in her eyrie. Then the light went out, and the window opened quietly.
Shyness overcame the young man. He moved away and went back to the corner in the saddle-room he had made his own—partly because he could smoke there undisturbed, and far more because it was directly under the girl's room, and he loved to hear her stirring above him.