sun. I would have liked to run, but felt I know not what in my legs that
made me drag myself on.

Far beyond, on the road-side grass, sat two boys. It was ... but no, they
were sitting there too glumly! I went up to them and, after all, knew
them for Sarelke and Lowietje, the village-constable's children. They sat
with their legs in the ditch, their elbows on their knees, earnestly
chatting. I sat down beside them, but they did not even look up, did not
notice me. Those two boys, my schoolmates, the worst two scamps in the
village, sat there like two worn-out old fogies: they did not know me.
This ought to have surprised me, and yet I thought that it must be right
and that it had always been so. They chatted most calmly of the price of
marbles, of the way to tell the best hoops, of buying a new box of tin
soldiers; and they mumbled their words as slowly as the priest in his
pulpit. I became uncomfortable, felt ill at ease in that stifling air,
under that half-dusk of the twilight, where everything was happening so
earnestly, so very slowly and so heavily. I, who was all for sport and
child's-play, now found my own chums so altered; and they no longer knew
me. I would have liked to shout, to grip them hard by the shoulder and
call out that it was I: I, I, I! But I durst not, or could not.

"There--comes--the--keeper," droned Sarelke.

Lowietje looked down the drove with his great glassy eyes. The two boys
stood up and, without speaking, shuffled away. I saw them get smaller and
smaller, till they became two black, hovering little specks that vanished
round the bend.

I was alone again! Alone, with all those trees, in that frightful silence
all around me. And the keeper, where was he? He would come, I knew it;