In spite of her fears, Christmas morning passed happily enough, and though the dinner was culinarily a failure, socially it was a huge success. The pudding, having triumphantly defeated the onslaughts of knives, forks and teeth, was accorded a hero's death in the kitchen fire, to the accompaniment of the Dead March on Nigel's fiddle, and various ritual acts extemporised by Len from memories both military and ecclesiastical. He was preparing a ceremonial funeral for the mince-pies, when he and Janey suddenly realised that Nigel had left the room. "Now where the devil has he gone?" Janey sighed. "Some silly game of his. I hope he'll be back soon." "Not he!--he's probably off for the day, to fiddle to those blasted kids, if they're not too full of plum-pudding to dance. By Christopher, Janey--he's mad." The dark was gathering stealthily--crawling up from the Kent country in the east, burying the wet winter meadows of Surrey and Sussex in damp and dusk and fogs. In the west a crimson furnace smouldered, showing up a black outline of hills. Moisture was everywhere--the roads gleamed with mud, the banks were sticky with damp tangled grass, and drops quivered and glistened on the bare twigs of the hedges. A great sense of disheartenment was everywhere. It was Christmas day, and hundreds of hearths were bright--but outside, away from humanity and its cheerful dreams, all Nature mourned, in the curse of the winter solstice, drowned in the water-flood. Furlonger had left his hearth with its cheery flames and loved faces and warm, sweet dreams of goodwill, and was out alone with Nature, who had no warmth nor love nor make-believe, only wet winds and winter desolation. He came to Dormans Land. The blinds were down, and through the chinks he saw the leap and spurt of firelight. He stood where three roads met, and the wind swept up from Lingfield, where the first stars had hung their lanterns. He began to play--a dreary, springless tune, that struck cold into the hearts of the few it reached through their closed windows. He played the song of Christmas as Nature keeps it--the festival of life's drowning and despair. No children came to dance. They were happy beside their parents, with sweets and crackers and fun. They were keeping Christmas as man keeps it, and drew down the blinds on Nature keeping it outside, and the lone fiddler who felt it more congenial to keep it with Nature than to keep it with men. Nigel stopped playing and looked around him into the gloom. He felt disappointed because the children had not come to dance. He had broken away from his brother and sister because he wanted those dancing children so badly--and they had not come. Perhaps he had better go further up into the village, since the children were not playing in the street as usual, but in their homes.