“That’s real back-end!” he exclaimed. “Unless you’ve lived in the country all your life, you can’t know what it means. You need only shut your eyes, and it paints little pictures for you. I can see things I loved when I was a boy: shadowy autumn evenings, driving home with my father from Witham, the long, white road and the black hedges and the dim land. Children running in to bed, and the cattle close under the fence, and no birds singing--all the field-things resting. The horse’s hoofs going clip-clop, a bit tired, and myself snuggled under my father’s elbow, half-asleep. The smell of the bonfires all the way--frost coming--leaves dropping--the lights showing one by one, and then the quiet night. The smell of the bonfires all the way, and then--home.” He was quite evidently talking to himself only, and again isolation turned her chill. Harriet would have known what he meant. Harriet, who nodded like a ploughboy, was born to the mysteries of bonfires and the back-end. They reached the Third Gate in Lancaster’s Lane, and there a big bank of mist laid its ghost-hands over their eyes, shutting out the scene beyond. Below it, on the soft, wet, vivid grass, was a fairy-ring. Dandy asked the meaning of it. “Fungus,” he explained, “but who wants to believe that? Do you know that picture of Butler’s--‘Pixie-Led’--the farm lad caught by the fairies in the gloaming, with the mist-wreaths twining round his knees, and the lights of the farm and the low, red sunset behind? He looks such a clumsy, bewildered giant, whirled round by the mischievous shreds of elves! I wonder if he remembered or forgot? They say if you dance with the fairies, you’re never the same again.” “It’s worth trying!” she put in half-mischievously. “They might teach me what the bonfires mean.” He shook his head. “That’s heritage--and association. By the time you’re old you’ll understand, if you go on wanting to. It’s the having grown with you, the being part of you, that fills the country with glamour. Rain in the night, the rolling of cart-wheels in the early morn, hounds giving tongue in a soft November--things like that--they’re riches, handfuls of gold, when you understand!” He dropped suddenly from the heights to tug at the ancient bars before them. “Time there was some new timber in here, by the look of it! This rotten stuff’ll hardly last the winter.” The golden lamp of the moon was up by now, shredding the barrier into misty scarves and skeins, and showing green-shaded fields where turnips and potatoes were grown alongside. Every shadow grew pitilessly sharp, and from the black hill-sides the lights sprang warm.