rooks had long since gone to bed. A scent of wood-smoke clung in the
air; the cottages appeared, the forge, the little shops facing the
village green. Lights in the doors and windows deepened; a breeze, which
hardly stirred the chestnut leaves, fled with a gentle rustling through
the aspens. Houses and trees, houses and trees! Shelter through the
past and through the days to come!

The Rector stopped the first man he saw.

"Fine weather for the hay, Aiken! How's your wife doing--a girl? Ah,
ha! You want some boys! You heard of our event at the Rectory? I'm
thankful to say----"

From man to man and house to house he soothed his thirst for fellowship,
for the lost sense of dignity that should efface again the scar of
suffering. And above him the chestnuts in their breathing stillness, the
aspens with their tender rustling, seemed to watch and whisper: "Oh,
little men! oh, little men!"

The moon, at the end of her first quarter, sailed out of the shadow of
the churchyard--the same young moon that had sailed in her silver irony
when the first Barter preached, the first Pendyce was Squire at Worsted
Skeynes; the same young moon that, serene, ineffable, would come again
when the last Barter slept, the last Pendyce was gone, and on their
gravestones, through the amethystine air, let fall her gentle light.

The Rector thought:

'I shall set Stedman to work on that corner. We must have more room; the
stones there are a hundred and fifty years old if they're a day. You
can't read a single word. They'd better be the first to go.'

He passed on along the paddock footway leading to the Squire's.

Day was gone, and only the moonbeams lighted the tall grasses.

At the Hall the long French windows of the dining-room were open; the
Squire was sitting there alone, brooding sadly above the remnants of the
fruit he had been eating. Flanking him on either wall hung a silent
company, the effigies of past Pendyces; and at the end, above the oak and
silver of the sideboard, the portrait of his wife was looking at them
under lifted brows, with her faint wonder.

He raised his head.

"Ah, Barter! How's your wife?"

"Doing as well as can be expected."

"Glad to hear that! A fine constitution--wonderful vitality. Port or
claret?"

"Thanks; just a glass of port."

"Very trying for your nerves. I know what it is. We're different from
the last generation; they thought nothing of it. When Charles was born
my dear