240 THE SOUTH COUNTRY 



there he waited, garrulously contented, for his release 

 from the post. So contented was he that when the grand- 

 daughter left her child with him, and after delays and 

 excuses and delays disappeared into the blank, indifferent 

 abyss of the multitude far away who knew not the house 

 and the family, he was not only contented but glad at 

 heart, for it was a rebel that was gone. 



For several years the white beard and the poor child 

 lived together happily, turning over old memories, old 

 books, old toys, taking the old walks through the long 

 garden, past, but not into, the beech wood that a whim of 

 the old man's had closed against even himself, against all 

 save the birds and the squirrels; over the high downs and 

 back into the deep vale which had produced that delicate 

 physical beauty and those gracious lusty ways beyond 

 which it seemed that men and women could hardly go in 

 earthly life. Very happy were those two, and very 

 placid; but within a week their tragic peace was per- 

 fected. The boy fell out of one of the apple-trees and 

 was killed. The old man could not but stumble over 

 that small grave into his own, and here is the end, the 

 unnoted, the common end, and the epitaph written by 

 the auctioneer and the rain. 



Much as I love rain, heavy or light, freakish or con- 

 tinuous, I am glad to be out of it for a little while and 

 to open a book of ballads by a solitary fire at " The 

 White Horse," and soon to close it after reading again 

 the lines — 



" O then bespake her daughter dear, 

 She was baith jimp and sma' : 

 * O row me in a pair o' sheets, 

 And tow me owre the wa' ! ' 



