They were all gone from the stable, when I went back to the farm, except the bearded nurse, and one tall fellow, who might have been the "Dying Gaul," as he crouched there in the straw; and the mare was sleeping—her head between her nurse's knees.
That night I woke at two o'clock, to find it bright as day, almost, with moonlight coming in through the flimsy curtains. And, smitten with the feeling which comes to us creatures of routine so rarely—of what beauty and strangeness we let slip by without ever stretching out hand to grasp it—I got up, dressed, stole downstairs, and out.
Never was such a night of frozen beauty, never such dream-tranquillity. The wind had dropped, and the silence was such that one hardly liked to tread even on the grass. From the lawn and fields there seemed to be a mist rising—in truth, the moonlight caught on the dewy buttercups; and across this ghostly radiance the shadows of the yew-trees fell in dense black bars. Suddenly, I bethought me of the mare. How was she faring, this marvellous night? Very softly opening the door into the yard, I tiptoed across. A light was burning in her box. And I could hear her making the same half-human noise she had made in the afternoon, as if wondering at her feelings; and instantly the voice of the bearded man talking to her as one might talk to a child: "Oover, me darlin'; yu've a-been long enough o' that side. Wa-ay, my swate—yu let old Jack turn 'u, then!" Then came a scuffling in the straw, a thud, again that half-human sigh, and his voice: "Putt your 'ead to piller, that's my dandy gel. Old Jack wouldn' 'urt 'u; no more'n ef 'u was the queen!" Then only her quick breathing could be heard, and his cough and mutter, as he settled down once more to his long vigil. I crept very softly up to the window, but she heard me at once; and at the movement of her head the old fellow sat up, blinking his eyes out of the bush of his grizzled hair and beard. Opening the door, I said:
"May I come in?"
"Oo, ay! Come in, Zurr, if 'u'm a mind to."
I sat down beside him on a sack, and for some time we did not speak, taking each other in. One of his legs was lame, so that he had to keep it stretched out all the time; and awfully tired he looked, grey-tired.
"You're a great nurse!" I said at last. "It must be hard work, watching out here all night."
His eyes twinkled; they were of that bright grey kind through which the soul looks out.
"Aw, no!" he said. "Ah don't grudge it vur a dumb animal. Poor things—they can't 'elp theirzelves. Many's the naight ah've zat up with 'orses and beasts tu. 'Tes en me—can't bear to zee dumb creatures zuffer!" And, laying his hand on the mare's ears: "They zay 'orses 'aven't no souls. 'Tes my belief they'm gotten souls, zame as us. Many's the Christian ah've seen ain't got the soul of an 'orse. Zame with the beasts—an' the sheep; 'tes only they can't spake their minds."
"And where," I said, "do you think they go to when they die?" He looked at me a little queerly, fancying, perhaps, that I was leading him into some trap; making sure, too, that I was a real stranger, without power over him, body or soul—for humble folk in the country must be careful; then, reassured, and nodding in his bushy beard, he answered knowingly: