Ruth had disappeared.
"No'w, thank you," said Alf in his cockiest manner. "I dare say you'll see me round here again next time I'm this way."
CHAPTER LIII
THE FIND
It was rather more than a year later.
Ernie, in grimy overall strapped over his waistcoat, and grey shirt without a tie, was climbing the lower slopes of High-'nd-Over from Sea-foord in an empty lorry.
Beneath him lay the Haven, buttressed by a gleam of white cliff, the Old River blue-winding to the sea at Exeat, and the New laid like a sword-blade across the curves of the Old.
The lorry bumped over the crest of the hill, austere and bare even in the sunshine, the sea broad-shining at its back, and dropped down out of the brilliant bleakness into the best wooded of the river-valleys that pierce the South Downs.
It was Saturday evening early in July.
There had been a fierce and prolonged drought. In the Brooks all along the banks of the slug-like stream the hay had already been carried fine in quality and light in weight. On the sun-burnt foothills a belated farmer was working overtime to carry the last load before Sunday. The long blue wain proceeded in lurches across the hill-side to the guttural exhortations of the wagoner, all about it a little busy knot of men and women raking and pitching.