Well , time had not stood still with him as it had with Luke Milligan 's cherry orchard , he reflected grimly . His springtime had long gone by . The few people he met on the road looked at him curiously , for strangers were not commonplace in Chiswick . He recognized some of the older among them but none of them knew him . He had been an awkward , long-limbed lad with fresh boyish colour and crisp black curls when he had left Chiswick . He returned to it a somewhat portly figure of a man , with close-cropped , grizzled hair , and a face that looked as if it might be carved out of granite , so immobile and unyielding it was -- the face of a man who never faltered or wavered , who stuck at nothing that might advance his plans and purposes , a face known and dreaded in the business world where he reigned master . It was a cold , hard , selfish face , but the face of the boy of forty years ago had been neither cold nor hard nor selfish . Presently the homesteads and orchard lands grew fewer and then ceased altogether . The fields were long and low-lying , sloping down to the misty blue rim of sea . A turn of the road brought him in sudden sight of the Cove , and there below him was the old Jameson homestead , built almost within wave-lap of the pebbly shore and shut away into a lonely grey world of its own by the sea and sands and those long slopes of tenantless fields . He paused at the sagging gate that opened into the long , deep-rutted lane and , folding his arms on it , looked earnestly and scrutinizingly over the buildings . They were grey and faded , lacking the prosperous appearance that had characterized them once . There was an air of failure about the whole place as if the very land had become disheartened and discouraged . Long ago , Neil Jameson , senior , had been a well-to-do man . The big Cove farm had been one of the best in Chiswick then . As for Neil Jameson , Junior , Robert Turner 's face always grew something grimmer when he recalled him -- the one person , boy and man , whom he had really hated in the world . They had been enemies from childhood , and once in a bout of wrestling at the Chiswick school Neil had thrown him by an unfair trick and taunted him continually thereafter on his defeat . Robert had made a compact with himself that some day he would pay Neil Jameson back . He had not forgotten it -- he never forgot such things -- but he had never seen or heard of Neil Jameson after leaving Chiswick . He might have been dead for anything Robert Turner knew .
Then , when John Kesley failed and his effects turned over to his creditors , XXXXX whom Robert Turner was the chief , a mortgage on the Cove farm at Chiswick , owned by Neil Jameson , had been found among his assets .
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