One day in the winter I had given Selina a commission—it was a mere trifle, but one of those trifles, a packet of tobacco or what not, which one wishes there should be no delay about. At tea-time it had not arrived, and it was past the time when Selina might be expected. I put on my hat and went out to look for her, but no pony and cart was to be seen. Then I set off strolling along the road to Northstow, asking a labourer or two whether they had seen Selina, but nothing was to be heard of her. With half a misgiving in my mind, I determined to go right on till I met her, and I was soon at the top of the hill, and pacing along the stretch of high road that lay along the uplands in the direction of the little town. It grew quite dark, and still no Selina. I was within a mile and a half of Northstow, where the road is bordered by a broad rim of grass, when I thought I saw a dark object a little in front of me by the roadside. I went up to it, and found it was Selina’s cart, without Selina or the pony. Then I struck a match, shading it with my hand from the breeze. I just made out the pony was lying on the grass under the hedge, and that the little woman was lying there too, with her head resting against his side. She seemed to be fast asleep. As I approached Elimelech rose from the pony’s neck, and fluttered around me. Hardly knowing what to do, and feeling as if I were breaking in ruthlessly on a scene so full of tender sadness, I stood there for a moment silent. Then I put my hand on Selina’s shoulder, saying, “How are you, Selina? What’s the matter? Has Fan come to grief?” Selina opened her eyes and looked at me; at first she did not know where she was. Then it all came back to her. “She’s dead,” she said at last. “She fell down suddenly in the cart and died. I took her out and dragged her so that no one should run over her, but it made me so tired that I must have fallen asleep.” The poor little woman put her arm round the dead pony’s neck, and began to caress it. I saw that it was hopeless to get her home without help, and went on up the road towards the nearest farmhouse, telling her to stay where she was till I came back. There was no need to tell her: she neither could nor would have moved. I had not gone far when by good luck I met a waggon returning empty to our village. I stopped the driver, whom I knew, told him what had happened, and got him to undertake to carry both Selina and her pony home in his waggon. I felt sure she would not leave her Fan to the mercy of any one who came by; and indeed I would not have left her there myself. Fan had so long been one of us that I shuddered to think of what nocturnal creatures might find her out in the night. There was a horrible story of a tramp who had passed a night in a barn not half a mile from this very spot, and had been attacked by rats in his sleep.