"Ah don't think they goes zo very far!"
"Why? Do you ever see their spirits?"
"Naw, naw; I never zeen none; but, for all they zay, ah don't think none of us goes such a brave way off. There's room for all, dead or alive. An' there's Christians ah've zeen—well, ef they'm not dead for gude, then neither aren't dumb animals, for sure."
"And rabbits, squirrels, birds, even insects? How about them?"
He was silent, as if I had carried him a little beyond the confines of his philosophy, then shook his head:
"'Tes all a bit dimsy-like. But yu watch dumb animals, Zurr, even the laste littlest one, and yu'll zee they knows a lot more'n what us thenks; an' they du's things, tu, that putts shame on a man's often as not. They've a got that in 'em as passes show." And not noticing my stare at that unconscious plagiarism, he added: "Ah'd zuuner zet up of a naight with an 'orse than with an 'uman; they've more zense, and patience." And, stroking the mare's forehead, he added: "Now, my dear, time for yu t' 'ave yure bottle."
I waited to see her take her draught, and lay her head down once more on the pillow. Then, hoping he would get a sleep, I rose to go.
"Aw, 'tes nothin' much," he said, "this time o' year; not like in winter. 'Twill come day before yu know, these buttercup-nights"; and twinkling up at me out of his kindly bearded face, he settled himself again into the straw. I stole a look back at his rough figure propped against the sack, with the mare's head down beside his knee, at her swathed chestnut body, and the gold of the straw, the white walls, and dusky nooks and shadows of that old stable, illumined by the "dimsy" light of the old lantern. And with the sense of having seen something holy, I crept away up into the field where I had lingered the day before, and sat down on the same half-way rock. Close on dawn it was, the moon still sailing wide over the moor, and the flowers of this "buttercup-night" fast closed, not taken in at all by her cold glory!
Most silent hour of all the twenty-four—when the soul slips half out of sheath, and hovers in the cool; when the spirit is most in tune with what, soon or late, happens to all spirits; hour when a man cares least whether or no he be alive, as we understand the word.... "None of us goes such a brave way off—there's room for all, dead or alive." Though it was almost unbearably colourless, and quiet, there was warmth in thinking of those words of his; in the thought, too, of the millions of living things snugly asleep all round; warmth in realising that unanimity of sleep. Insects and flowers, birds, men, beasts, the very leaves on the trees—away in slumber-land. Waiting for the first bird to chirrup, one had, perhaps, even a stronger feeling than in daytime of the unity and communion of all life, of the subtle brotherhood of living things that fall all together into oblivion, and, all together, wake.
When dawn comes, while moonlight is still powdering the world's face, quite a long time passes before one realises how the quality of the light has changed; and so, it was day before I knew it. Then the sun came up above the hills; dew began to sparkle, and colour to stain the sky. That first praise of the sun from every bird and leaf and blade of grass, the tremulous flush and chime of dawn! One has strayed far from the heart of things that it should come as something strange and wonderful! Indeed, I noticed that the beasts and birds gazed at me as if I simply could not be there at this hour which so belonged to them. And to me, too, they seemed strange and new—with that in them "which passeth show," and as of a world where man did not exist, or existed only as just another sort of beast or bird.