Even in the Valley of the Shadow of Death, the earth had not failed him. No one could separate him from her or cheat him of his reward in her. From her he had come and to her he would return, and in her he would be one with those whom he had lost, his dead wife and his dead son. There should be no disgrace there, nor torment, nor tears, nor sighing; no parting, when all are united in the one element and the children are asleep together on the mother’s breast.... 14 An hour later Mr. Sumption had left the green hill and was walking towards a little hamlet that showed its gables at the bend of the lane. Now that his grief was spent, drunk up by the earth like a storm, he remembered that he was hungry, and set out to hunt for food. There was an inn at the beginning of the street, a low house slopped with yellow paint and swinging the sign of the Star across the road. Mr. Sumption walked in and asked the landlady for breakfast; then, upon her stare, changed his demand to dinner, whereat she told him that the Star did not give dinners, and that there was a war on. However, he managed at last to persuade her to let him have some dry bread and tea, and a quarter of an hour later he was making the best of them in a little green, sunless parlour, rather pleasantly stuffy with the ghosts of bygone pipes and pots. The room was in the front of the house, and the shadow of the inn lay across the road, licking the bottom of the walls of the houses opposite. Above it they rose into a yellow glare of sunshine, and their roofs were bitten against a heavy blue sky. From quite near came the pleasant chink of iron, and craning his head he saw the daubed colours of a smith and wheelwright on a door a little further down the street. It comforted him to think that there should be a smith so near him, and all through his meal he listened to the clink and thud, with sometimes the clatter of new-shod hoofs in the road. When he had finished his dinner and paid his shilling he went out and up beyond the shadow of the inn to the smith’s door. The name of the hamlet was Lion’s Green, and he gathered he was some ten miles from home, beyond Horeham and Mystole. It would not take him more than a couple of hours to get back with his great stride, so there was time for him to linger and put off the evil hour when he must confront Mrs. Hubble and explain why he had been out all night. Meantime he would go and watch the smith.