280 MASTER SKYLARK

bling in the level path as though he were half blind or had
been beaten upon the head. He did not cry. This was
past all erying. He let himself be led along—it made no
matter where.

In Chapel lane there was a crowd along the Great House
wall; and on the wall Ned Cooke and Martin Addenbroke
were sitting. There were heads of people moving on the
porch and in the court, and the yard was all a-bustle and
to-do. But there was nobody in the street, and no one
looked at Nick and Cicely.

The Great House did look very fair in the sun of that
May day, with its homely gables of warm.red brick and
sunburnt timber, its cheery roof of Holland tile, and with
the sunlight flashing from the diamond panes that were
leaded into the sashes of the great bay-window on the
eastern garden side.

In the garden all was stir-about and merry voices.
‘There was a little green court before the house, and a
pleasant lawn coming down to the lane from the doorway
porch. The house stood to the left of the entry-drive, and
the barn-yard to the right was loud with the blithe crowing
of the cocks. But the high brick wall shut out the street
where Nick and Cicely trudged dolefully along, and to Nick
the lane seemed very full of broken crockery and dirt, and
the sunlight allamockery. The whole of the year had not
yet been so dark as this, for there had ever been the dream
of coming home. But now—he suffered himself to be led
along; that was enough.

They had come past the Great House up from Chapel