Rig way took him across a field in which there was a newly bourgeoned copse; he remembered that, last spring, he had found white violets about the roots of the trees.

A desire for their beauty and odour possessed him; he turned across the grass.

Presently a perfume guided him to a certain mossy corner where pale sweet florets nestled amid their leaves.

He bent over them, and stretched his hand to pluck, but in the same moment checked himself; why should he act the destroyer in this spot of perfect quietness and beauty?
"Dyce would not care much about them," was another thought that came into his mind.
He rose from his stooping posture with ache of muscles and creaking of joints.

Alas for the days when he ran and leapt and knew not pain! Walking slowly away, he worried himself about the brevity of life.
By a stile he passed into the highroad, at the lower end of the long village of Alverholme.