The Thirty-First of October
I woke next morning to the noise, the pleasant noise, of water boiling in a kettle. May God bless that noise and grant it to be the most sacred noise in the world. For it is the noise that babes hear at birth and that old men hear as they die in their beds, and it is the noise of our households all our long lives long; and throughout the world, wherever men have hearths, that purring and that singing, and that humming and that talking to itself of warm companionable water to our great ally, the fire, is home.
So thought I, half awake, and half asleep upon the hard dry earth of that floor. Yet, as I woke, my mind, not yet in Sussex, thought I was sleeping in an open field, and that there were round me comrades of the regiment, and that the embers that warmed my feet were a bivouac fire. Then I sat up, broad awake, and stiff after such a lodging, to find the Sailor crouching over the renewed flames of two stout logs on which he had established a kettle and water from a spring. He had also with him a packet of tea and some sugar, a loaf, and a little milk.
Grizzlebeard, stiff and stark upon his back along the bench, his head fallen flat, unsupported, his mouth open, breathing but slightly, seemed like a man dead. As for the Poet, he lay bunched up as would a man who had got the last bit of warmth he could; and he was still in a dead sleep, right up against the further corner of the fire.
I shook my coat from me and stood up.
“Sailor,” I said, “how long have you been awake?”
To which the Sailor answered:
“Ever since I was born: worse luck! I never sleep.”
“Where did you get those things,” said I, “that tea, that milk, that sugar, and that loaf?”
I yawned as I said it, and then I stretched my hands, which sleep had numbed, towards the rising life of the fire. The Sailor was still crouching at the kettle as he answered me slowly and with care:
“Why, you must know that near this house there lives a Troll, who many many years ago when he was young was ensnared by the love of a Fairy, upon that heath called Over-the-world. And he brought her home to be his bride, and lives close by here in a hut that is not of this world. He is my landlord, as it were, and he it was that gave me this tea, this milk, this sugar, and this loaf, but it is no good your asking where, for no one can find that warlock house of theirs but me.”
“That was a long lie to tell,” said I, “for I certainly should not have bothered myself to find out where the things came from, so only that I can get them free.”
“You are right,” said the Sailor, “and I also got them free.”
And having said that he upset the packet of tea, and the sugar, and the milk, right into the kettle, so that I cried out to him in alarm:
“What are you at?”
But he told me, as he took the kettle off:
“That is the way the Troll-tea was brewed by the Master-maid upon the heath called Over-the-world. I have been there, so I know.”
And with that he gave a great kick at the Poet, who sat up suddenly from his lump of clothes, looked wild for a moment, then knew where he was, and said “Oh!”
“It doesn’t rhyme,” said the Sailor, “but you shall have some tea.”
He poured out from the kettle, into the common mug we carried, a measure of the tea, and with his jackknife he cut off a slice of bread.
Our talk had awakened Grizzlebeard. That older man rose painfully from sleep, as though to see the day again were not to one of his years any very pleasing thing. He sat upon the bench, and for him, as to the one of honour, the tea was next poured out into that silver mug of his, and then was handed to him the next slice of bread. Then I drank and ate, and then the Sailor, and when all this was done we made things orderly in the hut, the Sailor and I. We folded the blankets and stood up the unburnt logs. We poured the kettle out and drank the milk, and stood the loaf upon the inglenook, and bidding farewell to that unknown place we left it, to converse with it no more. But the reason we had to put all things in order so, was (the Sailor told me) that if we angered the Troll he might never let us sleep there again.
“You are wonderful company, Sailor!” said I.
“For others, perhaps,” said he, as he locked the door and put the key in his pocket, “but not for myself; and yet that is the only thing that matters!”
By this time we were all upon the forest path again, turning this way and that as the Sailor might lead us. Sometimes we crossed a great ride without turning down it, and once the broad high road. But we went straight across that, and we passed many signs where it said that any common man found in these woods would be imprisoned, and some where it said that anyone not rich and yet wandering here might find themselves killed by engines. But the Sailor dodged his way nimbly about, making westward through it all, but so cunningly that even I, who know my County well, grew puzzled. I could not guess in what part of the wood we were until we came to a bottom through which a stream ran, and then I knew that this stream was the rising of the Mole, and that we were in Tilgate. Then I said to my companions: “Now the woods smell of home!”
But Grizzlebeard said that, considering what the world was like outside the County, all the County was home. And the Poet said that here were homing bits in the forest, and there were homing bits, and others that were stranger to him, and had not the spirit of our land.
But the Sailor said nothing, only leading us forward by clever paths so that the servants of the rich could not do us any hurt, and then he got us into an open glade, and there we sat and rested for a moment, with our breath drawing in the morning.
For the morning was not as the night had been, full of wind and hurrying clouds, but it was the morning after a gale, in which, on these high hills and among these lifting trees, the air was ambassadorial, bringing a message of life from the sea. But it was a halted air. It no longer followed in the procession of the gale, but was steady and arrived. So that the sky above us was not clouded, and had in it no sign of movement, but was pale with a wintry blue. And there was a frost and a bite all about, although it was so early in the year and winter hardly come. But the leaves had fallen early that year, and the forest was already desolate.
When we had rested ourselves a moment in this glade we followed the Sailor again by a path which presently he left, conducting us with care through untouched underwood, until we came to a hedge, and there across the hedge was the great main road and Pease Pottage close at hand.
“I have led you through this wood,” the Sailor said, “and now you may take what road you will.”
Myself. “Now, indeed, I know every yard of the way; and I will take you down towards our own country. But I will take you in my own fashion, for I know the better places, and the quiet lands, and a roof under which we shall be free to sleep at evening. You shall follow me.”
“You know all this?” said Grizzlebeard to me curiously, “then can you tell me why all these woods are called St. Leonard’s Forest?”
Myself. “Why, certainly; they are called St. Leonard’s Forest after St. Leonard.”
The Poet. “Are you so sure?”
Myself. “Without a doubt! For it is certain that St. Leonard lived here, and had a little hermitage in the days when poor men might go where they willed. And this hermitage was in that place to which I shall presently take you, from which it is possible to worship at once both our County, and God who made it.”
Saying which I took them along the side road which starts from Pease Pottage (and in those days the old inn was there), but before doing so I asked them severally whether they had any curse on them which forbade them to drink ale of a morning.
This all three of them denied, so we went into the Swan (which in those days I say again was the old inn), and we drank ale, as St. Leonard himself was used to do, round about nine or ten o’clock of an autumn morning. For he was born in these parts, and never went out of the County except once to Germany, when he would convert the heathen there; of whom, returning, he said that if it should please God he would rather be off to hell to convert devils, but that anyhow he was tired of wandering, and thereupon set up his hermitage in the place to which I was now leading my companions.
For when we had gone about a mile by the road I knew, we came to that place where the wood upon the left ends sharply upon that height and suddenly beneath one’s feet the whole County lies revealed.
There, a day’s march away to the south, stood the rank of the Downs.
No exiles who have seen them thus, coming back after many years, and following the road from London to the sea, hungry for home, were struck more suddenly or more suddenly uplifted by that vision of their hills than we four men so coming upon it that morning, and I was for the moment their leader; for this was a place I had cherished ever since I was a boy.
“Look,” said I to Grizzlebeard, “how true it is that in this very spot a man might set his seat whence-from to worship all that he saw, and God that must have made it.”
“You are right,” said Grizzlebeard; “I see before me the Weald in a tumbled garden, Wolstonbury above New Timber and Highden and Rackham beyond” (for these are the names of the high hills), “and far away westward I see under Duncton the Garden of Eden, I think, to which we are bound. And sitting crowned in the middle place I see Chanctonbury, which, I think, a dying man remembers so fixed against the south, if he is a man from Ashurst, or from Thakeham, or from the pine-woods by the rock, whenever by some evil-fortune a Sussex man dies far away from home.”
“Tell me,” said the Sailor, “can you fix for us here the place where St. Leonard built his hermitage?”
“Certainly,” said I, and they gathered round.
“Here,” said I, “was the cella” (drawing a circle with my stick upon the ground), “and here” (moving off a yard or two) “was his narthex or carfax, as some call it, and here to the right” (and here I moved backwards and drew my stick across some sand) “was the bibulatium; but all the ruins of this monument have disappeared through quarrying and the effects of time, saving always such traces as can be distinguished by experts, and I am one.”
Then, wishing to leave them no time for wrangling, I took them down away through Shelley Plain, and when I had gone a mile or so I said:
“Is not the river to which we are bound the river of Arun?”
The Poet. “Why, yes. If it were not so I would never have joined you.”
The Sailor. “Certainly we are bound for Arun, which, when a man bathes in it, makes him forget everything that has come upon him since his eighteenth year—or possibly his twenty-seventh.”
“Yes,” said Grizzlebeard, more gravely, “we are bound for the river of Arun, which is as old as it is young, and therein we hope to find our youth, and to discover once again the things we knew.”
“Why, then,” said I, “let me mock you and cover you with disillusion, and profane your shrines, and disappoint your pilgrimage! For that trickle of water below you to the left in the dale, and that long lake you see with a lonely wood about either shore is the place where Arun rises.”
Grizzlebeard. “That is nothing to me as we go along our way. It is not little baby Arun that I come to see, but Arun in his majesty, married to salt water, and a king.”
The Sailor. “For my part I am glad to have assisted at the nativity of Arun. Prosper, beloved river! It is your business (not mine) if you choose to go through so many doubtful miles of youth, and to grope uncertainly towards fruition and the sea.”
The Poet. “There is always some holiness in the rising of rivers, and a great attachment to their springs.”
By this time we had come to the lake foot, where a barrier holds in the water, and the road crosses upon a great dam. And we watched as we passed it the plunge of the cascade; and then passing over that young river we went up over the waste land to the height called Lower Beeding, which means the lower place of prayer, and is set upon the very summit of a hill. Just as Upper Beeding is at the very lowest point in the whole County of Sussex, right down, down, down upon the distant marshes of Adur, flush, as you may say, with the sea.
For when Adam set out (with the help of Eve) to name all the places of the earth (and that is why he had to live so long), he desired to distinguish Sussex, late his happy seat, by some special mark which should pick it out from all the other places of the earth, its inferiors and vassals. So that when Paradise might be regained and the hopeless generation of men permitted to pass the Flaming Sword at Shiremark Mill, and to see once more the four rivers, Arun and Adur, and Cuckmere and Ouse, they might know their native place again and mark it for Paradise. And the best manner (thought Adam) so to establish by names this good peculiar place, this Eden which is Sussex still, was to make her names of a sort that should give fools to think. So he laid it down that whatever was high in Sussex should be called low, and whatever was low should be called high, and that a hill should be called a plain, and a bank should be called a ditch, and the North wood should be south of the Downs, and the Nore Hill south of the wood, and Southwater north of them all, and that no one in the County should pronounce th, ph, or sh, but always h separately, under pain of damnation. And that names should have their last letters weighed upon, contrariwise to the custom of all England.
So much for our names, which any man may prove for himself by considering Bos‑ham, and Felp‑ham, and Hors‑ham, and Arding‑ly, and the square place called “Roundabout.” Or the Broadbridge, which is so narrow that two carts cannot pass on it. God knows we are a single land!
We had passed then, we four (and hungry, and stepping strongly, for it was downhill), we had passed under the cold pure air of that good day from Lower Beeding down the hill past Leonard’s Lee, and I was telling my companions how we might hope to eat and drink at the Crabtree or at Little Cowfold, when the Sailor suddenly began to sing in a manner so loud and joyful that in some more progressive place than the County he would most certainly have been thrown into prison. But the occasion of his song was a good one, for debouching through the wooded part of the road we had just come upon that opening whence once more, though from a lower height, the open Weald and the magnificence of the Downs is spread out to glorify men’s eyes. He sang that song, which is still native to this land, through all the length of it, and we who had heard it each in our own place first helped him with the chorus, and then swelled it altogether in diverse tones. He beginning:—
I
“On Sussex hills where I was bred,
When lanes in autumn rains are red,
When Arun tumbles in his bed,
And busy great gusts go by;
When branch is bare in Burton Glen
And Bury Hill is a whitening, then,
I drink strong ale with gentlemen;
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny!II
“In half-November off I go,
To push my face against the snow,
And watch the winds wherever they blow,
Because my heart is high:
Till I settle me down in Steyning to sing
Of the women I met in my wandering,
And of all that I mean to do in the spring.
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny,
Which nobody can deny!III
“Then times be rude and weather be rough,
And ways be foul and fortune tough,
We are of the stout South Country stuff,
That never can have good ale enough,
And do this chorus cry!
From Crowboro’ Top to Ditchling Down,
From Hurstpierpoint to Arundel town,
The girls are plump and the ale is brown:
Which nobody can deny, deny,
Deny, deny, deny, deny!
If he does he tells a lie!”
When we had all done singing and were near the Crabtree, the Sailor said:
“Now, was not that a good song?”
“Yes,” said I, “and well suited to this morning and to this air, and to that broad sight of the lower land which now spreads out before us.”
For even as I spoke we had come to that little shelf on which the Crabtree stands, and from which one may see the Downs all stretched before one, and Bramber Gap, and in the notch of it the high roof of Lancing; and then onwards, much further away, Arundel Gap and the hills and woods of home. It was certainly in the land beneath us, and along the Weald, which we overlooked, that once, many years ago, a young man must have written this song.
Grizzlebeard. “In what places, Myself, do you find that you can sing?”
Myself. “In any place whatsoever.”
The Sailor. “As, for instance, at the table of some rich money-lending man who has a few men friends to dinner that night, with whom he would discuss Affairs of State, and who has only asked you because you were once a hanger-on of his great-nephew’s. This would seem to me an excellent occasion on which to sing ‘Golier!’ ”
The Poet. “Yes, or again, when you are coming (yourself small and unknown) to the reception of some wealthy hostess from whom you expect advancement. It was in such a place and at such a time that Charlie Ribston, now in jail, did first so richly produce his song, ‘The Wowly Wows,’ which has that jolly chorus to it.”
Grizzlebeard. “The reason I asked you where you could sing was, that I thought it now impossible in any place, I mean in this realm, and in our dreadful time. For is there not a law, and is it not in force, whereby any man singing in the open, if he be overheard by the police, shall be certified by two doctors, imprisoned, branded, his thumb marks taken, his hair shaved off, one of his eyes put out, all his money matters carefully gone into backwards and forwards, and, in proportion to the logarithm of his income a large tax laid on? And after all this the duty laid upon him under heavy pains of reporting himself every month to a local committee, with the parson’s wife up top, and to a politician’s jobber, and to all such other authorities as may see fit, pursuant to the majesty of our Lord the King, his crown and dignity? I seem to have heard something of the kind.”
“Yes, you are right enough,” said I; “but when a man comes to lonely places, which are like islands and separate from this sea of tyranny, as, for instance, this road by Leonard’s Lee, why a man can still sing.”
The Sailor. “Yes, and in an inn.”
“In a few inns,” said I, “under some conditions and at certain times.”
Grizzlebeard. “Very well, we will choose upon this march of ours such inns and such times. And is this one?” he added, pointing to the Crabtree.
“Not outside,” I answered cautiously, “nor at this hour.”
“However,” said the Poet, “we will eat.”
So we sat outside there upon the benches of the Crabtree Inn, eating bread and cheese.
Now when we had eaten our bread and cheese in that cold, still air, and overlooking so great a scene below us, and when we had drunk yet more of the ale, and also of a port called Jubilee (for the year of Jubilee was, at the time this walk was taken, not more than five years past), the Sailor said in a sort of challenging tone:
“You were saying, I think, that a man could only sing today in certain lonely places, such as all down that trim hedgerow, which is the roadside of Leonard’s Lee, and when Grizzlebeard here asked whether a man might sing outside the Crabtree, you said no. But I will make the experiment; and by way of compromise, so that no one may be shocked, my song shall be of a religious sort, dealing with the great truths. And perhaps that will soften the heart of the torturers, if indeed they have orders, as you say, to persecute men for so simple a thing as a song.”
Grizzlebeard. “If your song is one upon the divinities, it will not go with ale and with wine, nor with the character of an inn.”
The Sailor. “Do not be so sure. Wait until you have heard it. For this song that I am proposing to sing is of a good loud roaring sort, but none the less it deals with the ultimate things, and you must know that it is far more than one thousand years old. Now it cannot be properly sung unless the semi-chorus (which I will indicate by raising my hands) is sung loudly by all of you together, nor unless the chorus is bellowed by the lot of you for dear life’s sake, until the windows rattle and the populace rise. Such is the nature of the song.”
Having said so much then, the Sailor, leaning back, began in a very full and decisive manner to sing this
Song of the Pelagian Heresy for the Strengthening of Men’s Backs and the Very Robust Out-Thrusting of Doubtful Doctrine and the Uncertain Intellectual.
“Pelagius lived in Kardanoel,
And taught a doctrine there,
How whether you went to Heaven or Hell,
It was your own affair.“How, whether you found eternal joy
Or sank forever to burn,
It had nothing to do with the Church, my boy,
But was your own concern.”
Grizzlebeard. “This song is blasphemous.”
The Sailor. “Not at all—the exact contrary, it is orthodox. But now I beg of you do not interrupt, for this is the semi-chorus.”
[Semi-chorus.]
“Oh, he didn’t believe
In Adam and Eve,
He put no faith therein!
His doubts began
With the fall of man,
And he laughed at original sin!”
In this semi-chorus we all joined, catching it up as he went along, and then the Sailor, begging us to put all our manhood into it, launched upon the chorus itself, which was both strong and simple.
[Chorus.]
“With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
He laughed at original sin!”
When we had got as far as this, which was the end of the first verse, and defines the matter in hand, the very extravagant noise of it all brought out from their dens not a few of the neighbourhood, who listened and waited to see what would come. But the Sailor, not at all abashed, continued, approaching the second verse.
“Whereat the Bishop of old Auxerre
(Germanus was his name),
He tore great handfuls out of his hair,
And he called Pelagius Shame:
And then with his stout Episcopal staff
So thoroughly thwacked and banged
The heretics all, both short and tall,
They rather had been hanged.”[Semi-chorus.]
“Oh, he thwacked them hard, and he banged them long,
Upon each and all occasions,
Till they bellowed in chorus, loud and strong,
Their orthodox persuasions!”[Chorus.]
“With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
Their orthodox persu‑a‑a‑sions!”
At the end of this second verse the crowd had grown greater, and not a few of them had dropped their lower jaws and stood with their mouths wide open, never having heard a song of this kind before. But the Sailor, looking kindly upon them, and nodding at them, as much as to say, “You will understand it all in a minute,” took on the third verse, with still greater gusto, and sang:—
“Now the Faith is old and the Devil is bold,
Exceedingly bold indeed;
And the masses of doubt that are floating about
Would smother a mortal creed.
But we that sit in a sturdy youth,
And still can drink strong ale,
Oh—let us put it away to infallible truth,
Which always shall prevail!”[Semi-chorus.]
“And thank the Lord
For the temporal sword,
And howling heretics too;
And whatever good things
Our Christendom brings,
But especially barley brew!”[Chorus.]
“With my row-ti-tow, ti-oodly-ow,
Especially barley brew!”
When we had finished this last chorus in a louder mode than all the rest, you may say that half the inhabitants of that hill were standing round. But the Sailor, rising smartly and putting money down upon the table to pay for our fare and somewhat over, bade us all rise with him, which we did, and then he spoke thus to the assembly:—
“Good people! I trust you clearly heard every word of what we have just delivered to you, for it is Government business, and we were sent to give it to you just as we had ourselves received it of the Cabinet, whose envoys we are. And let me add for your comfort that this same Government of our Lord the King (his crown and dignity), ever solicitous for the welfare of poorer folk, has given us monies wherewith to refresh all the people of Sussex all our way along. On which account I have left here upon the table, in the name of the aforesaid Right Honourables, a sum of five shillings, against which you may order ale to the breaking point, and so good day to you. But you are strictly charged that you do not follow us or molest us in any fashion, to the offence of those good Ministers who lie awake at night, considering the good of the people, and the service of our Lord the King (his crown and dignity). Oyez! Le Roi le veult!”
And having said this he beckoned us to follow him, and as we strode down the road we heard them all cheering loudly, for they thought that time had come which is spoken of by the Prophet Habakkuk, “When the poor shall be filled and the rich shall be merry.” A thing that never yet was since the beginning of the world.
As we swung down the road which leads at last to Little Cowfold, Grizzlebeard, thinking about that song, said:
“I cannot believe, Sailor, that your song is either old or true; for there is no such place as Kardanoel, and Pelagius never lived there, and his doctrine was very different from what you say, and the blessed Germanus would not have hurt a fly. As witness that battle of his somewhere in Flint, where he discomforted the Scotch, of all people, by talking Hebrew too loud, although he only knew one word of the tongue. Then, also, what you say of ale is not ecclesiastical, nor is it right doctrine to thank the Lord for heresy.”
The Sailor. “Anything you will! But every church must have its customs within reason, and this song, or rather hymn, is of Breviary, and very properly used in the diocese of Theleme upon certain feast days. Yes, notably that of Saints Comus and Hilarius, who, having nothing else to do, would have been cruelly martyred for the faith had they not contrariwise, as befits Christian men, be-martyred and banged to death their very persecutors in turn. It is a prose of the church militant, and is ascribed to Dun-Scotus, but is more probably of traditional origin. Compare the ‘Hymn to the Ass,’ which all good Christian men should know.”
Grizzlebeard. “Nevertheless I doubt if it be for the strengthening of souls, but rather a bit of ribaldry, more worthy of the Martyrs’ Mount which you may know, than of holy Sussex.”
When we had come to Little Cowfold, which we did very shortly, it was already past three in the afternoon, and therefore in such early weather (more wintry than autumn) the air had a touch of evening, and looking at the church there and admiring it, we debated whether we should stop in that place a little while and pick a quarrel with anyone, or lacking that, sing another song, or lacking that, drink silently. For Virgil says, “Propria quae Cowfold Carmen Cervisia Ludus.”
But as it was so late we thought we would not do any of these things, but take the way along to Henfield and get us near to the Downs, though how far we should go that night we none of us could tell. Only we were settled on this, that by the next day, which would be All-Hallows, we must come upon the river Arun and the western part of the County, and all the things we knew.
So we went on southward towards Henfield, and as we went, Grizzlebeard, who was striding strongly, reminded us that it was All Halloween. On this night of all nights in the year there is most stir and business among the things that are not seen by men, and there is a rumour in all the woods; and very late, when men are sleeping, all those who may not come to earth at any other time, come and hold their revels. The Little People who are good for the most part, dance this night in the meadows and undergrowth, and move in and out of the reeds along the river bank, and twine round and round in rings holding hands upon the flat pastures, the water meadows, and the heaths that are nearer the sea. It is this dancing of theirs that leaves upon the grass its track in a brighter green, and marks the fields with those wheels and circles which convince unbelieving men.
The Poet said that he had seen the Little People, but we knew that what he said was false.
Grizzlebeard said that though he had not seen them he believed, in reward for which the Little People had blest him all his life. And that was why (he told us) he was so rich, for though his father had left him plenty, the Little People had increased it, because he had neither doubted them nor ever wished them ill.
The Sailor. “Then you were lucky! For it is well known that those who come upon the Little People dancing round and round are caught by them in the middle of the ring. And the Little People laugh at them with a noise like very small silver bells. And then, as though to make amends for their laughter, they lead the mortal away to a place where one can go underground. And when they get there, in a fine hall where the Queen sits with Oberon, it is ordered that the man shall be given gold. They bring him a sack, and he stuffs it full of the gold pieces, full to the neck, and he shoulders it and makes to thank them, when, quite suddenly, he finds he is no longer in that hall, but on the open heath at early morning with no one about, and in an air quite miserably cold. Then that man, shivering and wondering whether ever he saw the Little People or no, says to himself, ‘At least I have my gold.’ But when he goes to take the sack up again he finds it very light, and pouring out from it upon the ground he gets, instead of the gold they gave him, nothing but dead leaves; the round dead leaves and brown of the beech, and of the hornbeam, for it is of this sort that they mint the fairy gold. They say that as he leaves it there, disappointed and angry at his adventure, he seems to hear again, though it is daylight, far down beneath the ground, the slight tinkle of many tiny silver bells, and knows that it is the Little People laughing.”
Grizzlebeard. “So it may be for those who have the great misfortune to see the Little People, but, as I told you, I have never seen them, and with me it has been the other way about. Year after year have I picked up the dead leaves, until all the leaves of my life were dead, and year after year I have found between my hands gold and more gold.”
The Poet. “I tell you again I have seen them, and when I was a younger man I saw them often, and I would be with them for hours in that good place of theirs where nothing matters very much and no one goes away.”
The Sailor. “And what did they give you beyond that loon look which is the mark of all your tribe?”
The Poet. “Why, they gave me the power to conceive good verse, and this I still retain.”
The Sailor. “Now indeed, Poet, I believe, which I did not at first, that you have seen the Little People. For what you have just said proves it to me. You also have handled fairy gold—and there are many like you. For the Little People gave you verse that seemed well minted, sterling and sound, and you put it into your sack and you bore it away. But when you came out into man’s-world and tasted the upper air, then, as all your hearers and your readers know, this verse turned out to be the light and worthless matter of dead leaves. Oh, do not shake your head! We know that verse of youth which the fairies give us in mockery; only we, when we grow up, are too wise to cherish the bag-full. We leave it for the wind to scatter, for it is all dead leaves. Only you poets hang on to your bag and clutch it and carry it with you, making fools of yourselves all your lives long, while we sturdy fellows in a manly fashion turn to the proper things of men in man’s-world, and take to lawyering and building, and the lending of money and horse-doping, and every other work that befits a man.”
Grizzlebeard. “And you, Myself, have you ever seen the Fairies?”
Myself. “I do not think so. I do not think I have ever seen them: alas for me! But I think I have heard them once or twice, murmuring and chattering, and pattering and clattering, and flattering and mocking at me, and alluring me onwards towards the perilous edges and the water-ledges where the torrent tumbles and cascades in the high hills.”
The Sailor. “What did they say to you?”
Myself. “They told me I should never get home, and I never have.”
As we so talked the darkness began to gather, for we had waited once or twice by the way, and especially at that little lift in the road where one passes through a glen of oaks and sees before one great flat water meadows, and beyond them the high Downs quite near.
The sky was already of an apple green to the westward, and in the eastern blue there were stars. There also shone what had not yet appeared upon that windless day, a few small wintry clouds, neat and defined in heaven. Above them the moon, past her first quarter but not yet full, was no longer pale, but began to make a cold glory; and all that valley of Adur was a great and solemn sight to see as we went forward upon our adventure that led nowhere and away. To us four men, no one of whom could know the other, and who had met by I could not tell what chance, and would part very soon forever, these things were given. All four of us together received the sacrament of that wide and silent beauty, and we ourselves went in silence to receive it.
And so when it was full dark we came to Henfield, and determined that it was time for bread, and for bacon, and for ale—a night meal inspired by the road and by the tang of the cold. For you must know that once again, though it was yet so early in the year, a very slight frost had nipped the ground.
We made therefore for an inn in that place, and asked the mistress of it to fry us bacon, and with it to give us bread and as much ale as four men could drink by her judgment and our own; and while we sat there, waiting for this meal, the Sailor said to me:
“Come now, Myself, since you say that you know the County so well, can you tell us how Hog is made so suitable to Man?”
Grizzlebeard. “Why, no man can tell that, for we only know that these things are so. But some men say that in the beginning the horse was made for man to ride, and the cow for man to milk, and the hog for man to eat; with wheat also, which was given him to sow in a field, just as those stars and that waxing moon were given him to lift his eyes towards heaven, and the sun to give him light and warmth by day. But others say that all things are a jumble, and that the stars care nothing for us, and that the moon, if only the truth were known, is a very long way off, and a useless beast (God forgive me! It is not I that speak thus, but they!), and that we just happened upon horses (which I can well believe when I see some men ride), and that even that most-perfectly-fitting creature and manifestly-adapted-to-man, that hale four-footed one, the Hog, was but an accident, and is not an end in himself for us, but may, in the change of human affairs, be replaced by some other more suitable thing. All things are made for an end, but who shall say what end?”
Myself. “Those who talk thus, Grizzlebeard, have not carefully considered the works of man, nor his curious ways, which betray in him the reflection of his Creator, and mark him for an artist. The curing of Hog Flesh till it become bacon is a sure evidence of the creed. There are those, I know, who still pretend that the pin and the needle, the hammer and the saw, and even the violin, grew up and were fashioned bit by bit, man stumbling towards them from experiment to experiment. At these atheists I howl, believing verily and without doubt that in the beginning, when grandfather and grandmother were turned out of Eden, and were compelled by some Order in Council or other to leave this County (but we are now returned), they were very kindly presented by the authorities with the following:—
“One toolbox.
A cock and six hens.
Some paint and brushes and a tube of sepia.
Six pencils, running from BB to 4H.
Tobacco in a tin.
A Greek Grammar and Lexicon.
Half-hours with the best writers of English verse and prose, excluding thing-um-bob.
A little printing-press.
A Bible.
The Elements of Jurisprudence.
A compact travelling medicine chest.
A collection of seeds, with
A pamphlet that should accompany these, and
Two Pigs.
“These last also were saved in the Ark, as witness Holy Writ, and one of them later accompanied St. Anthony, and is his ritual beast on every monument.”
“But all this,” said the Sailor, as he began eating his bacon, “tells us nothing of the curing of pigs, which art, you say, is a proof of man’s original instruction, and of the intentions of Providence.”
Myself. “And I said it very truly, for how of himself could man have discovered such a thing? There is revelation about it, and the seeming contradiction which inhabits all mysterious gifts.”
Grizzlebeard. “You mean that there is no curing a pig until the pig is dead? For though that is the very moment when our materialists would say that he was past all healing, yet (oh, marvel!) that is the very time most suitable for curing him.”
The Poet. “Well, but beyond the theology of the matter, will you not tell us how a pig is cured, for I long to learn one useful thing in my life.”
Myself. “You will not learn it in the mere telling; for what says the Philosopher? ‘If you would be a Carpenter you must do Carpenter’s work.’ However, for the enduring affection I bear you, and also for my delight in the art, I will expound this thing.
“First, then, you cut your pig in two, and lay each half evenly and fairly upon a smooth well-washed board of deal, oak, ash, elm, walnut, teak, mahogany, ebony, rosewood, or any other kind of wood; and then, taking one such half you put by on one side a heap of saltpetre, and gathering a handful of this saltpetre you very diligently rub it into the flesh, and, rubbing, have a care to rub it rubbedly, as rub should, and show yourself a master rubber at rubbing. And all this you must do on the inside and not on the out, for that is all covered over with hair.
“When, therefore, you have so rubbed in a rubbard manner until your rubment is aglow with the rubbing, why then desist; hang up your half pig on a hook from a beam, and wash your hands and have done for that day.
“But next day you must begin again in the same manner (having first consecrated your work by a prayer), and so on for thirty days; but each day a little less than the last, until, before the curing is ended, you are taking but a tithe of the saltpetre you took at the beginning.
“When all this is over your half pig is as stiff as a prude, and as salt as sorrow, and as incorruptible as a lawyer, and as tough as Tacitus. Then may you lift it up all of one piece, like a log, and put it to smoke over a wood fire, as the giants did in old time, or you may pack it between clean layers of straw, as the Germans do to this day, or you may do whatever you will, and be damned to it; for no matter what you do, you will still have a pig of pigs, and a pork perfect, that has achieved its destiny and found the fruit of its birth: a scandal to Mahound, and food for Christian men.”
The Sailor. “All that you say is true enough, but what of the bristles of the pig? What of his hair? Are not bristles better in brushes than in bacon?”
Myself. “You speak truth soundly, though perhaps a little sharply, when you ask, ‘How about hair?’ For the pig, like all brutes, differs from man in this, that his hide is covered with hair. On which theme also the poet Wordsworth, or some such fellow, composed a poem which, as you have not previously heard it, let me now tell you (in the fashion of Burnand) I shall at once proceed to relate; and I shall sing it in that sort of voice called by Italians ‘The Tenore Stridente,’ but by us a Hearty Stave.”
“The dog is a faithful, intelligent friend,
But his hide is covered with hair;
The cat will inhabit the house to the end,
But her hide is covered with hair.“The hide of the mammoth was covered with wool,
The hide of the porpoise is sleek and cool,
But you’ll find, if you look at that gambolling fool,
That his hide is covered with hair.“Oh, I thank my God for this at the least,
I was born in the West and not in the East,
And He made me a human instead of a beast,
Whose hide is covered with hair!”
Grizzlebeard (with interest). “This song is new to me, although I know most songs. Is it your own?”
Myself. “Why, no, it’s a translation, but a free one I admit, from Anacreon or Theocritus, I forget which. … What am I saying? Is it not Wordsworth’s, as we said just now? There is so much of his that is but little known! Would you have further verses? There are many …”
The Sailor. “No.”
Myself. “Why, then, I will immediately continue.
“The cow in the pasture that chews the cud,
Her hide is covered with hair.
The Sailor. “Halt!”
“And even a horse of the Barbary blood,
His hide is covered with hair!“The camel excels in a number of ways,
And travellers give him unlimited praise—
He can go without drinking for several days—
But his hide is covered with hair.”
Grizzlebeard. “How many verses are there of this?”
Myself. “There are a great number. For all the beasts of the field, and creeping things, and furred creatures of the sea come into this song, and towards the end of it the Hairy Ainu himself. There are hundreds upon hundreds of verses.
“The bear of the forest that lives in a pit,
His hide is covered with hair;
The laughing hyena in spite of his wit,
His hide is covered with hair!“The Barbary ape and the chimpanzee,
And the lion of Africa, verily he,
With his head like a wig, and the tuft on his knee,
His hide …”
Grizzlebeard (rising). “Enough! Enough! These songs, which rival the sea-serpent in length, are no part of the true poetic spirit, and I cannot believe that the conscientious Wordsworth, surnamed ἱπποκέφαλος, or Horse Face, wrote this, nor even that it is any true translation of Anacreon or the shining Theocritus. There is some error! This manner of imagining a theme, to which innumerable chapters may be added in a similar vein, is no part of poetry! It is rather a camp-habit, worthy only of a rude soldiery, to help them along the road and under the heavy pack. For I can understand that in long marches men should have to chant such endless things with a pad and a beat of the foot to them, but not we. I say enough, and enough!”
I answered him, getting up also as he had, and making ready for the road. “Why, Grizzlebeard, this is not very kind of you, for though you had allowed me but fifteen verses more I could have got through the Greater Carnivorae, and perhaps, before the closure, we could have brought in the Wart Hog, who loves not war, but is a Pacifist.”
The Poet (rising also). “It may be so, good Myself, but remember that you bear them all in store. Nothing is really lost. You will rediscover these verses in eternity, and no doubt your time in hell will be long enough to exhaust, in series, all the animals that ever were.”
The Sailor (rising last). “Grizzlebeard has saved us all!”
With this condemnation of a noble song they moved out of doors on to the road, a little aimlessly, gazing out towards the high Downs, under the now bright-burnished moon, and doubtful whither they should proceed. Grizzlebeard proposed in a gentle fashion that we should go on to an inn at Bramber and sleep there, but the Sailor suddenly said, “No!”
He said it with such violence and determination that we were all surprised, and looked at him with fear. Then he went on:
“No, we will not go to the inn at Bramber, nor breathe upon embers which are now so nearly extinguished; we will not go and walk in the woods whence all the laurels have been cut away, nor will we return to emotions which in their day were perhaps but vaguely divine, but which the lapse of time has rendered sacred. It is the most perilous of human endeavours, is this attempt to return to the past; should it fail, it breeds the most woeful of human woes. I know as well as you the gardens of Bramber, and I, too, have sat there eating and drinking upon summer evenings between the last light and the dark. I, too, have watched a large star that began to show above Buttolph Combe; and I, also, have seen the flitter-mice darting above me in an air like bronze. Believe me, I have heard the nightingale in Bramber, but I will not return.”
The Poet. “But—!”
The Sailor. “Be silent! … I will not return. … It was the best of inns! … You talk of the inn at Saint Girons, where the wine was good in the days of Arthur Young, and is still good today—not the same wine, but the grandson of the same wine—and you speak favourably of that inn under the pass coming in from Val Carlos. You talk justly of the famous inn at Urgel, known as the Universal Inn, from which a man can watch under a full moon the vast height of the Sierra del Cadí; and you perpetually repeat the praises of the inn at the Sign of the Chain of Gold, under a large ruined castle, by a broad and very peaceful river in Normandy. You do well to praise them, but all these inns together could not even stand at the knees of what was once the inn at Bramber.”
Myself. “I have never mentioned one of these inns!”
The Sailor. “There is not upon earth so good a thing as an inn; but even among good things there must be hierarchy. The angels, they say, go by steps, and I am very ready to believe it. It is true also of inns. It is not for a wandering man to put them in their order; but in my youth the best inn of the inns of the world was an inn forgotten in the trees of Bramber. It is on this account that I will not return. The famous Tuscan inns have tempted many men to praise them, some (as I think) extravagantly. And of the lesser inns of seaports sailors (though they never praise in prose or verse) know and speak of the Star of Yarmouth—I mean of Great Yarmouth—and the County Inn of the other Yarmouth—I mean of Little Yarmouth—and especially in loud voices do they commend the Dolphin at Southampton, which is a very noble inn with bow windows, and second to no house in the world for the opportunity of composing admirable verse and fluent prose. Then also, lying inland one day’s march from the sea, how many inns have not sailors known! Is there not the Bridge Inn of Amberley and the White Hart of Storrington, the Spread Eagle of Midhurst, that oldest and most revered of all the prime inns of this world, and the White Hart of Steyning and the White Horse of Storrington and the Swan of Petworth, all of which it may be our business to see? They were mortal inns, human inns, full of a common and a reasonable good; but round the inn at Bramber, my companions, there hangs a very different air. Memory bathes it and the drift of time, and the perpetual obsession of youth. So let us leave it there. I will put up the picture of an early love; I will hear with mixed sorrow and delight the songs that filled my childhood; but I will not deliberately view that which by a process of sanctification through time has come to be hardly of this world. I will not go sleep in the inn at Bramber—the gods forbid me.
“Nay, apart from all of this which you three perhaps (and especially the Poet) are not of a stuff to comprehend, apart from these rare and mysterious considerations, I say, there is an evident and an easy reason for not stirring the leaves of memory. Who knows that we should find it the same? Who knows that the same voices would be heard in that garden, or that the green paint on the tables would still be dusty, blistered, and old? That the chairs would still be rickety, and that cucumber would still be the principal ornament of the feast? Have you not learnt in your lives, you two that are one young, one middle-aged, and you, the third, who are quite old, have you not learnt how everything is a function of motion; how all things only exist because they change? And what purpose would it serve to shock once more that craving of the soul for certitude and for repose? With what poignant and terrible grief should we not wrestle if the contrast of that which was once the inn at Bramber should rise a terrible ghost and challenge that which is the inn at Bramber now! Of what it was and what it has become might there not rise a dual picture before our minds—a picture that should torture us with the doom of time? I will not play with passions that are too strong for men; I will not go sleep tonight at the inn of Bramber.
“Is not the world full of other inns wherein a man can sleep deeply and wake as it were in a new world? Has not heaven set for us, like stars in the sky, these points of isolation and repose all up and down the fields of Christendom? Is there not an inn at the Land’s End where you can lie awake in a rest that is better than slumber, listening to the noise of the sea upon the Longships and to the Atlantic wind? And is there not another inn at John o’ Groats to which you may bicycle if you choose (but so shall not I)? Is there not the nameless inn famous for its burgundy in Llanidloes? Is there no Unicorn in Machynlleth? Are there not in Dolgelly forty thousand curious inns and strong? And what of the Feathers at Ludlow, where men drink so often and so deeply after the extinguishing of fires, and of its sister inn at Ledbury? And what of the New Inn at Gloucester, which is older than the New College at Oxford or the New Bridge at Paris? And by the way, if Oxford itself have no true inns, are there not inns hanging like planets in a circle round the town? The inns of Eynsham, of Shillingford, of Dorchester, of Abingdon, the remarkable inn at Nuneham, and the detestable inn at Wheatley which fell from grace some sixty years ago, and now clearly stands for a mark of reprobation to show what inns may become, when, though possessed of free will and destined to eternal joy, they fail to fulfil their hostelarian destiny. … Yes, indeed, there are inns enough in the world among which to choose without being forced by evil fate or still more evil curiosity to pull out in the organ of the soul the deep but—oh! the fast and inviolable—the forbidden stops of resurrection and of accomplished loving. For no man may relive his youth, nor is love fruitful altogether to man.”
Grizzlebeard (musing). “If it were not so far I should proceed this very night to the Station Hotel at York, which of all the houses I know is the largest and the most secure.”
The Poet. “And I to the Fish, Dog, and Duck where the Ouse comes in to the Cam, or to the Grapes on the hills above Corbridge before you venture upon the loneliness of Northumberland; both excellent inns.”
Myself. “But I, to the sign of the Lion, up on Arun, which no man knows but me. There should I approach once more the ancient riddle, and hear, perhaps, at last, the voices of the dead, and know the dooms of the soul.”
The Sailor. “You would all three do well. For inns are as men and women are, with character and fate infinitely diversified, and to one an old man goes for silence and repose, to another a younger man for adventure or for isolation, to a third a poet for no reason save to lay up a further store of peevish impotence, which is the food upon which these half-men commonly feed. So also there are inns coquettish, inns brutal, inns obvious, inns kindly, and inns strong—each is for a mood. But as in every life there is one emotion which may not be touched and to which the common day is not sufficient, so with inns. For me one is thus sacred, which is that inn at Bramber. Thither therefore, as I think I have said before, I will not go.”
Myself. “Now that all the affectation of your talk is spent, I may tell you that you might have saved your breath, for close at hand I know of a little house, empty but well furnished and full of stores for winter. Sailor—I say this to you—the Trolls are not my friends. Yet of such little houses all up and down the County I alone possess the keys. We will go, then, to this little house of mine, for it is not a mile across the water meadows.”
This we did, and as we passed the wooden bridge we saw below us my little river, the river Adur, slipping at low tide towards the sea.
So we went on over the water meadows. It was very cold, and the moon rode over Chanctonbury in a clear heaven. We did not speak. We plodded on all four, in single file, myself leading, along the narrow path by the bare hedge-side. The frost had touched the grass, and the twigs of quickset were sharp in the moonlight like things engraved upon metal. We came out upon the Ashurst road. The mill was all sound in those days, and the arms of it stood against the sky. We walked abreast, but still in silence: the Poet slouched and Grizzlebeard let his stick trail along the ground, and even the Sailor had a melancholy air, though his strong legs carried him well. As for me I still pressed onwards a little ahead of the line, for I knew my goal near at hand, while for my three companions it was but an aimless trudge through the darkness after a long day’s journey. So did we near that little house which God knows I love as well as any six or seven little houses in the world.
We came to the foot of a short hill: tall elms stood out against the sky a short way back from the road and beyond a little green. Beneath them shone the thatch of a vast barn, and next it a sight which I knew very well … the roof and chimney. I turned from the road to cross the green, and I took from my pocket a great key, and when my companions saw this their merriment returned to them, for they knew that I had found the shelter.
Grizzlebeard said: “Look how all doors in the County open to you!”
“Not all,” I answered, “but certainly four or five.”
I turned the key in the lock, and there, within, when I had struck a match, appeared the familiar room. The beam of the ceiling was a friend to me and the great down-fireplace inhabited the room. There, in that recess, lay on the dogs and the good pile of ashes, a faggot and four or five huge logs of cord wood, of oak from the clay of the Weald: I lit beneath all these a sheaf of verse I had carried about for months, but which had disappointed me, and the flames leapt up, in shape like leaves of holly. It was a good sight to see.
With the fire humanity returned; we talked, we spread our hands; one pulled the curtains over the long low window of the room, another brought the benches near the blaze, benches with high backs and dark with age; another put the boards on the trestles before it; another lit two candles and stood them in their own grease upon the boards. We were in a new mood, being come out of the night and seeing the merriment of the fire.
Next we would send to the Fountain for drink. For the inn of Ashurst is called the Fountain Inn. It is not the Fountain called the “Fount of Gold” of which it is written—
“This is that water from the Fount of Gold—
Water of youth and washer out of cares.”
The Fountain of Ashurst runs, by God’s grace, with better stuff than water.
Nor is it that other Fountain which is called
“Fountain of years and water of things done.”
For though there are honourable years round the Fountain of Ashurst, yet most certainly there are no regrets. It is not done for yet. Binge! Fountain, binge!
Nor is it the Fountain of Vaucluse, nor that of Moulton Parva or Thames-head, which ran dry when George III died and has never run since: nor the Bandusian Spring. No, nor Helicon, which has been tapped so often that it gave out about thirty-five years ago, and has been muddy ever since.
Nor is it of those twin fountains, of hot water the one and of cold the other, where the women of Troy were wont to wash their linen in the old days of peace ere ever Greek came to the land.
No, it was none of these but the plain Fountain of Ashurst, and thither did we plan to send for bread and cheese and for ale with which this fountain flows.
As for whom we should send, it was a selection. Not Grizzlebeard, out of the respect for age, but one of the other three. Not I, because I alone knew the house, and was busy arranging all, but one of the other two. Not the Poet, because, all suddenly, the Muse had him by the gullet and was tearing him. Already he was writing hard, and had verse almost ready for us, and said that this sort of cooking should not be disturbed.
Therefore it was the Sailor who was sent, though he hated the thought of the cold.
He rose up and said: “When in any company one man is found more courageous and more merry, more manly, more just, and more considerate, stronger, wiser, and much more holy than his peers, very generous also, yet firm and fixed in purpose, of good counsel, kind, and with a wide, wide heart, then if (to mention smaller things) he is also of the most acute intelligence and the most powerful in body of them all, it is he that is made the drudge and the butt of the others.”
With that he left us, carrying a great two gallon can, and soon returned with it full of Steyning ale, and as he put it down he said: “The Fountain runs, but not with common water. It shall become famous among Fountains, for I shall speak of it in rhyme.” Then he struck the Poet a hearty blow, and asked after the health of his poem.
The Poet. “It is not quite completed.”
The Sailor (sitting down near the fire and pouring out the ale). “It is better so! Let us have no filling up of gaps. Beware of perfection. It is a will-o’-the-wisp. It has been the ruin of many.”
Grizzlebeard. “Is there a tune?”
The Poet. “There is a sort of dirge.”
Myself. “Begin to sing.”
The Poet—
“Attend, my gentle brethren of the Weald,
Whom now the frozen field
Does with his caking shell your labour spurn,
And turn your shares and turn
Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres;”
The Sailor. “Oh! Lord! It is a dirge! The man chaunts like old Despair on a fast day! Come let us—”
Myself. “No, the Poet must end; let him continue.”
The Poet, when he had looked reproachfully at the Sailor, filled his lungs a little fuller than before, and went on:
“Your cattle homeward to their lazy byres;
Oh! gather round our fires
And point a stave or scald a cleanly churn
The while
With ritual strict and nice observance near,
We weave in decent rhyme
A Threnody for the Departing Year.”
The Sailor. “ ‘Decent’ is bad; and you cannot have a threnody for something that is not dead.”
The Poet (continuing)—
“And you that since the weary world began,
Subject and dear to man,
Have made a living noise about our homes,
You cows and geese and pigs and sheep and all the crew
Of mice and coneys too
And hares and all that ever lurks and roams
From Harting all the way to Bodiam bend,
Attend!
It is a solemn time,
And we assembled here
Advance in honourable rhyme
With ritual strict and nice observance near
Our Threnody for the Departing Year.
The year shall pass, and yet again the year
Shall on our reeds return
The tufted reeds to hurrying Arun dear. …”
Here the Poet stopped and looked at the fire.
“Have you made an end?” said the Sailor with a vast affectation of solicitude.
“I have stopped,” said the Poet, “but I have not finished.”
“Why, then,” said the Sailor, “let me help you on,” and he at once began impromptu:
“As I was passing up your landing towns
I heard how in the South a goddess lay.”
Then he added: “I can’t go on.”
The Poet—
“She ends our little cycle with a pall.”
Grizzlebeard. “Who does?”
The Poet. “Why, that goddess of his; I shall put her in and make her wind it up. The Sailor is not the only man here who can compose offhand. I promise you …
“She ends our little cycle with a pall:
The winter snow—the winter snow shall reverently fall
On our beloved lands,
As on Marana dead a winding sheet
Was laid to hide the smallness of her hands,
And her lips virginal:
Her virginal white feet.”
When that dirge had sunk and they, as they sat or lay before the fire, had nodded one by one, sleep came upon them all three, weary with the long day’s going and the keenness of the air. They had in their minds, that All Hallowe’en as sleep took them, the Forest of the highland and the great Weald all spread below and the road downward into it, and our arrival beneath the nightly majesty of the Downs. They took their rest before the fire.
But I was still wakeful, all alone, remembering All-Hallows and what dancing there was in the woods that night, though no man living might hear the music, or see the dancers go. I thought the fire-lit darkness was alive. So I slipped to the door very quietly, covering the latch with my fingers to dumb its noise, and I went out and watched the world.
The moon stood over Chanctonbury, so removed and cold in her silver that you might almost have thought her careless of the follies of men; little clouds, her attendants, shone beneath her worshipping, and they presided together over a general silence. Her light caught the edges of the Downs. There was no mist. She was still frosty-clear when I saw her set behind those hills. The stars were more brilliant after her setting, and deep quiet held the valley of Adur, my little river, slipping at low tide towards the sea.
When I had seen all this I went back within doors, as noiselessly as I had come out, and I picked through the sleepers to my own place, and I wrapped myself in my cloak before the fire. Sleep came at last to me also; but that night dead friends visited me in dreams.