"It cannot be," he answered.
"Why not?" asked the stranger. "More wonderful things have happened."
Suddenly he cast aside his nonchalant air, and said earnestly:
"Look into the brook."
As though compelled by an influence he had no power to withstand, Mr. Weston gazed into the brook, and saw reflected there his own face and the face of the stranger who was bending over the water by his side. Their backs were turned towards the labourer, who, not doubting the stranger's sinister designs, prepared himself for any emergency by spitting on his hands and smoothing his side-locks. He was aware of the responsible position he occupied, and he settled with himself that in the event of the stranger pushing Mr. Weston into the water, the first thing for him to do would be to run away and cry, "Fire!"
"Take my hand," the stranger said, in a sad sweet tone. They joined hands, and the hand-clasp was reflected in the brook. "Why cannot it be? It is not always that the words which make a friendship are as intangible as the shadowy semblance of it which we see before us. Words are not all air--spoken, forgotten, lost for ever. Why cannot it be? Here we two old men stand, looking into the past; it might really be so. How many years ago was it--forty?--that two young men stood beside a brook as we stand now, looking into the future?" Mr. Weston's hand tightened upon that of his companion. "They loved each other then--do they love each other now! I can answer for one. They were friends in the best meaning of the word--are they friends now? Thirty odd years have past. It was just such a day as this; and the air was sweet and life was sweet. Do you remember?"
They raised their faces to each other; their lips quivered; their eyes were suffused with tears.
"Gerald!"
"Richard!"
"It is like a dream," said Mr. Weston, with his hand to his eyes.