He did not answer immediately. The moon came from behind a cloud, and Sarah Jane strained her eyes into the distance. "Dan ought to be coming," she said. "A wife?" he asked suddenly. "Perhaps if I could find another Sarah Jane----" "My stars! what a thought! Poor company for 'e--the likes of me!" "I've never seen such another, all the same." She laughed. "Well, why for don't you look round?" He stood still and did not reply. "My! how bright the moon be this evening," she said. "There they are--Daniel and Walter Agg. I see 'em long ways off.": "Do you know that the moon was alive once?" he asked. "She was a mother; and now she's only a grave for all the things she bore. She's our picture, too--the skeleton at the world's feast of life. It will be just the same here, Sarah Jane--cold--dead--the earth and moon going round together--like two corpses dancing at a dying fire." "What dreadful things you know!" "Life's only conjuring with dust. I suppose we shall never find out how 'tis done. But there are clever chaps in the audience always jumping up and saying 'That's it! I see the trick!' Only they don't. Each new book I get hold of gives the lie to the last. There's nothing true that I can see. Like a boy chasing a butterfly: down comes his hat after a long run. But the butterfly's in the air." "Proper place for it." "Perhaps so. A butterfly pinned into a case is only half the truth of a butterfly. Words in a book can never be more than half the truth of ideas. But I'm sick of reading. I'm sick of everything--but you. Don't be frightened. You said just now I ought to go and look about. Well, I'm going. I'm going to London for a while, and then down to Kent to a cousin of mine--a hop-grower there." "The change will do you a world of good." "That's doubtful. I shan't be very contented out of sight of Dartmoor. Perhaps if I can't see Great Links for a while, I shall value it all the more when I come back." "And do, for pity's sake, bring a wife with 'e." Daniel Brendon and Agg approached, and Hilary spoke to them as they arrived. "I'm telling Mrs. Brendon that I mean to take a holiday, Dan. Going to look at London again. 'Twill make me long to be back home pretty quick, if it does nothing else." "You might buy one of them new mowing machines against the hay-harvest, if you be up there, master," suggested Agg; but Daniel did not speak. He had returned from chapel in a spirit very amiable, and to find Sarah Jane under the moonlight with Woodrow instantly changed his mood. They parted immediately, and Brendon spoke to Sarah Jane as they entered their home. "What be you doing, walking about with the man after dark?" "I was afraid you might be vexed. We met quite by chance as I came to seek you, and he stopped, and would be talking. He said he ban't going to be a long-lived man, and I told him he wants a wife; and then he said if he could get another like me he might think of it."