It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old couple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and only surviving child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his mother the result of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig: a week later he lay dead of the typhoid that scourged Maidstone. Hence the pig was sacred, cared for and loved by this Darby and Joan. “Ee be mos’ like a child to me and the mother, an’ mos’ as sensible as a Christian, ee be,” the old man had said; and I could hardly credit my eyes when I saw the tall bent figure side by side with the black pig, coming along my road on such a day. I hailed the old man, and both turned aside; but he gazed at me without remembrance. I spoke of the pig and its history. He nodded wearily. “Ay, ay, lad, you’ve got it; ’tis poor Dick’s pig right enow.” “But you’re never going to take it to E—?” “Ay, but I be, and comin’ back alone, if the Lord be marciful. The missus has been terrible bad this two mouths and more; Squire’s in foreign parts; and food-stuffs such as the old woman wants is hard buying for poor folks. The stocking’s empty, now ’tis the pig must go, and I believe he’d be glad for to do the missus a turn; she were terrible good to him, were the missus, and fond, too. I dursn’t tell her he was to go; she’d sooner starve than lose poor Dick’s pig. Well, we’d best be movin’; ’tis a fairish step.” The pig followed comprehending and docile, and as the quaint couple passed from sight I thought I heard Brother Death stir in the shadow. He is a strong angel and of great pity. CHAPTER V THERE is always a little fire of wood on the open hearth in the kitchen when I get home at night; the old lady says it is “company” for her, and sits in the lonely twilight, her knotted hands lying quiet on her lap, her listening eyes fixed on the burning sticks. I wonder sometimes whether she hears music in the leap and lick of the fiery tongues, music such as he of Bayreuth draws from the violins till the hot energy of the fire spirit is on us, embodied in sound. Surely she hears some voice, that lonely old woman on whom is set the seal of great silence? It is a great truth tenderly said that God builds the nest for the blind bird; and may it not be that He opens closed eyes and unstops deaf ears to sights and sounds from which others by these very senses are debarred? Here the best of us see through a mist of tears men as trees walking; it is only in the land which is very far off and yet very near that we shall have fulness of sight and see the King in His beauty; and I cannot think that any listening ears listen in vain. The coppice at our back is full of birds, for it is far from the road and they nest there undisturbed year after year. Through the still night I heard the nightingales calling, calling, until I could bear it no longer and went softly out into the luminous dark.