ot their Christmas ready, that they have.
Lord! you should see the chitterlings, and--the sausages hung up to and
along the beams. That's a crown for any dwellin'! They runs 'em round
the top of the room--it's like a May-day wreath in old times. Home-fed
hog! They've a treat in store, they have. And snap your fingers at the
world for many a long day. And the hams! They cure their own hams at
that house. Old style! That's what I say of a hog. He's good from end to
end, and beats a Christian hollow. Everybody knows it and owns it.'

Redworth was getting tired. In sympathy with current conversation, he
said a word for the railways: they would certainly make the flesh of
swine cheaper, bring a heap of hams into the market. But Andrew Hedger
remarked with contempt that he had not much opinion of foreign hams:
nobody, knew what they fed on. Hog, he said, would feed on anything,
where there was no choice they had wonderful stomachs for food. Only,
when they had a choice, they left the worst for last, and home-fed
filled them with stuff to make good meat and fat 'what we calls prime
bacon.' As it is not right to damp a native enthusiasm, Redworth let
him dilate on his theme, and mused on his boast to eat hog a solid hour,
which roused some distant classic recollection:--an odd jumble.

They crossed the wooden bridge of a flooded stream.

'Now ye have it,' said the hog-worshipper; 'that may be the house, I
reckon.'

A dark mass of building, with the moon behind it, shining in spires
through a mound of firs, met Redworth's gaze. The windows all were
blind, no smoke rose from the chimneys. He noted the dusky square of
green, and the finger-post signalling the centre of the four roads.
Andrew Hedger repeated that it was The Crossways house, ne'er a doubt.
Redworth paid him his expected fee, whereupon Andrew, shouldering
off, wished him a hearty good night, and forthwith departed at high
pedestrian pace, manifestly to have a concluding look at the beloved
anatomy.

There stood the house. Absolutely empty! thought Redworth. The sound of
the gate-bell he rang was like an echo to him. The gate was unlocked.
He felt a return of his queer churchyard sensation when walking up the
garden-path, in the shadow of the house. Here she was born: here her
father died: and this was the station of her dreams, as a girl at school
near London and in Paris. Her heart was here. He looked at the windows
facing the Downs with dead eyes. The vivid id