Master Nathaniel looked at him. The fixed stare, the slightly-open mouth, the rigid motionless body, fettered by a misery too profound for restlessness--how well he knew the state of mind these things expressed! But there must surely be relief in thus allowing the mood to mould the body's attitude to its own shape. He had no need now to ask his son for explanations. He knew so well both that sense of emptiness, that drawing in of the senses (like the antennae of some creature when danger is no longer imminent, but there), so that the physical world vanishes, while you yourself at once swell out to fill its place, and at the same time shrink to a millionth part of your former bulk, turning into a mere organ of suffering without thought and without emotions; he knew also that other phase, when one seems to be flying from days and months, like a stag from its hunters--like the fugitives, on the old tapestry, from the moon. But when it is another person who is suffering in this way, in spite of one's pity, how trivial it all seems! How certain one is of being able to expel the agony with reasoning and persuasion! It was in a slightly husky voice that, laying his hand on Ranulph's, he said, "Come, my son, this won't do." And then, with a twinkle, he added, "Chivvy the black rooks away from the corn." Ranulph gave a little shrill laugh. "There are no black rooks--all the birds are golden," he cried. Master Nathaniel frowned--with that sort of thing he had no patience. But he determined to ignore it, and to keep to the aspect of the case for which he had real sympathy. "Come, my son!" he said, in a tenderly rallying voice. "Tell yourself that tomorrow it will all be gone. Why, you don't think you're the only one, do you? We all feel like that at times, but we don't let ourselves be beaten by it, and mope and pine and hang our heads. We stick a smile on our faces and go about our business." Master Nathaniel, as he spoke, swelled with complacency. He had never realised it before, but really it was rather fine the way he had suffered in silence, all these years! But Ranulph had sat up in bed, and was looking at him with a strange little smile. "I'm not the same as you, father," he said quietly. And then once more he was shaken by great sobs, and screamed out in a voice of anguish, "I have eaten fairy fruit!" At these terrible words Master Nathaniel stood for a moment dizzy with horror; then he lost his head. He rushed out on to the landing, calling for Dame Marigold at the top of his voice. "Marigold! Marigold! Marigold!" Dame Marigold came hurrying up the stairs, calling out in a frightened voice, "What is it, Nat? Oh, dear! What is it?" "By the Harvest of Souls, hurry! Hurry! Here's the boy saying he's been eating ... the stuff we don't mention. Suffering cats! I'll go mad!" Dame Marigold fluttered down on Ranulph like a plump dove.