Why had she not brought a lantern, she asked herself. Was it really because she was jug and package laden, or had it been only conceit? She asked the question still more self-reproachfully when, after smashing the empty jug in a stumble which left her knuckles bleeding, she heard the gurgle of a water-hen and realized that she was far off her track and nearly into the Brad. She could not swim, but even a swimmer in such a moonless, starless void would not see the shore. Cautiously feeling her way among the willows, she groped towards the pasture-land, paradoxically pleased when she fell over a sleeping cow. She lay there some minutes in the warm darkness, not anxious to move on, for the river wound perilously in and out, one could still hear it rippling deliciously in the reeds, and the odours of the night were as exquisite. And then through the measureless blackness a faint suggestion of grey began to make itself perceptible or rather divinable, so shadowy was it, a lesser shade of black rather than an adumbration of light; it was as if behind the blank firmament some star was striving to shine. And suddenly, mystically, she felt that this hinted radiance was God, the Light behind life’s darkness, and the words of the twenty-third Psalm came to her mind with all the force of a revelation. “_The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters._” How divinely apt was every word! So long as she had not wanted for aught, so long as she had not needed to be led, she had not really felt the meaning of the words: now that she was strayed and a-hungered, she knew overpoweringly that she had a shepherd. He was behind her watching, as surely as she watched over her grandfather. Now she understood what the Peculiars meant when they got up to testify. She must go back to them, bear witness this very next Sunday. Mr. Fallow’s church had no place for such testimonies. Women could not speak even at Morning Service. And as if to complete her conversion, there was a swift pattering, a joyous bark, and a cold nose in her fevered palm. She had only to attach her handkerchief to Nip’s collar to be guided safely home. But it was Nip that was really her shepherd, she told herself, or at least her sheep-dog: it was Nip that was leading her beside the still waters. Dog was after all only God spelt backwards, she thought, with a sense of mystic discovery. And remembering all that Nip had done to bring her back to faith in life, she felt he was indeed a divine messenger. But then it was borne in upon her that if she testified her true thoughts, the Brethren would deem her irreverent. After all, it was Mr. Fallow who might understand better, he who spoke of his bees with love, and had once cited to her a passage from a Roman poet about bees being part of the divine mind. The Roman writer was not a Catholic, he had explained carefully, seeing her dubious face.