"But it's rather nice to have the horrors sometimes," came Nancy's voice from behind the bar. "I wonder why!" "Not but what," continued the sexton, "it is not excusable now for me. For my work is very sad and awesome indeed." The sexton had never before been so impressed with the conversational advantage of his lugubrious occupation, and he determined to make up for lost opportunities. "I believe you, sexton," said Peter Smith, "Some of them as I've buried was all young and blooming, and others were ever so old, nearly as old as Canthrop yonder." "Don't talk like that," said the patriarch, hoarsely. "Ye make me afeard." "I wonder what it is to-night," said a labourer in the corner who had hitherto drunk in silence, "that makes you all talk as if you couldn't say what you meant." "Perhaps a man is being hanged," said the sexton. "Poor fellow!" said Nancy. "I feel queer to-night," drawled old Canthrop. "But I don't know why that is. What is it makes it so?" "The moon, old man, the moon." The company started with fear at the sound of this strange voice, turned round, and with blanched faces beheld the figure of an old man framed in the doorway, with the silver light creeping along his hoary beard, and over his unprecedented clothes. For the stranger was clothed in what appeared to be a white woollen dressing-gown, with a purple border, and he had sandals on his feet. He wore no hat, and his snowy hair waved gently in the radiance of the gaslight. He walked forward amid a dead silence, and laid his hand on old Canthrop's shoulder. "Yes, old comrade in a life of folly," he cried. "The moon is full to-night, and you know it is her fault. Hers are the fiery drops that make your eyes water and my eyes shine. I, to whom she has revealed her secret springs of knowledge and beauty, you, who have not fifty words to your tongue--I, who feel her gentle influence pervading forest and meadow, tower and town, you, who feel only the terror of her nocturnal power that brings you to your fellows, you, the village dotard, I, the king of the world; we have one mother, old man, and that's the Moon! You see and fear the great white spaces that flit before your eyes; I know and love her cloudy caverns of mystery and wonder." "Who are you?" whispered old Canthrop. "Go away!" "A minute, a minute. I am what you will, Death, Destiny, a Poet. Is John Gaffekin here?" "Are you...." began John. "I am the same. Ask nothing more. My dear--a drink round to all, for our farewell." The Poet looked round, smiling at the solemn and pale faces, at the trembling hands of those that proposed his health. Then, linking his arm through John's, he took him out into the street. "Come with me," said the Poet, "we will go to old William Price's shop."