So he went up, and stood between the church and the Royal Oak. The place seemed deserted--only a great, empty car stood outside the inn. Nigel began to play, but again there was no response. The darkness came fluttering towards him from the back streets of the village, and seemed to creep right into his heart. Then suddenly it struck him that he played too doleful a tune for the children. They liked lively airs--they found it hard to dance to those bizarre mournful extempores of his. So he started "O Caro Nome," and when that had jigged and rippled to an end, he played airs from Flotow's _Martha_, and then his old favourite, "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls." The street was still empty. From a cottage close by came the wheeze of a harmonium. He stood drearily snapping the strings with his fingers. Then suddenly he realised how ridiculous he was--playing in the village street, in the damp and the cold and the dark, when he ought to be at home, eating and drinking and singing and joking because Christ was born in a manger. He turned away--he was a fool. Why did he like seeing children dance?--why did it hurt him so that they were better employed to-day? He did not know. His life, his emotions, his heart, were like the twilight, a dark and cheerless mystery. He could not understand half what he felt in his own breast. He was himself only a child dancing in the dusk, to an unknown fiddler playing a half-comprehended tune. The next moment he heard the inn door open behind him, and turning round saw a short, broad figure on the doorstep, wrapped in an enormous motor-coat. "Will you not play something else?" The words came heavily, with a teutonic lumber. Nigel saw a round, florid face, and dark, very close-cropped hair. He hesitated--perhaps the stranger was making game of him. "I have been listening to you for some time, and now I have come to see you. I am surprised. I do not think you are a beggar." "Not quite," said Nigel. "Well, play some more." Again Furlonger hesitated. Then he hoisted his fiddle to his shoulder with a short, rather grating, laugh. He played the Requiem from _Il Trovatore_. There was silence. The darkness seemed to pass in waves over the sky, each wave engulfing it deeper. The wind sobbed a strange little tune in the eaves of the inn. "You have tortured my ears," said the stranger. Nigel flushed angrily--so after all the idea had been to make game of him--"with your damned Verdi." "How do you mean?" "You are too good to play Verdi." "Oh!" "What are your favourite composers?" "Gounod--Verdi--Balfe----" "Ai! Ai! Ach!" and the stranger put his hands over his ears. Nigel was beginning to be faintly amused. "Well, what's the matter with 'em?" "The matter?--they are dead." "That'll be the matter with us all, sooner or later." "Let us hope it will be sooner for some of us."