"Well, and even if I'm not," retorted Hempie, "where's the good of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, 'There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars.' And why? Because it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing." Suddenly, all the pent-up misery and fear of the last thirty years seemed to be loosening in Master Nathaniel's heart--he was sobbing, and Hempie, with triumphant tenderness, was stroking his hands and murmuring soothing words, as she had done when he was a little boy. When his sobs had spent themselves, he sat down on a stool at her feet, and, leaning his head against her knees, said, "Sing to me, Hempie." "Sing to you, my dear? And what shall I sing to you? My voice isn't what it once was ... well, there's that old song--'Columbine,' I think they call it--that they always seem singing in the streets these days--that's got a pretty tune." And in a voice, cracked and sweet, like an old spinet, she began to sing: "When Aubrey did live there lived no poor. The lord and the beggar on roots did dine With lily, germander, and sops in wine. With sweet-brier, And bon-fire, And strawberry-wire, And columbine." As she sang, Master Nathaniel again heard the Note. But, strange to say, this time it held no menace. It was as quiet as trees and pictures and the past, as soothing as the drip of water, as peaceful as the lowing of cows returning to the byre at sunset. CHAPTER XI A STRONGER ANTIDOTE THAN REASON Master Nathaniel sat at his old nurse's feet for some minutes after she had stopped singing. Both his limbs and his mind seemed to be bathed in a cool, refreshing pool. So Endymion Leer and Hempie had reached by very different paths the same conclusion--that, after all, there was nothing to be frightened about; that, neither in sky, sea, nor earth was there to be found a cavern dark and sinister enough to serve as a lair for IT--his secret fear.