Mrs Jeremy retired, the tears standing in her eyes. She shook hands with me, but didn't speak.
Jeremy resumed his seat, lit his pipe, and began to explain. His voice trembled and almost broke down with the first sentence.
"You see," he said, waving his hand towards the fire, "it's a childless hearth.... It hasn't always been. There was one, once—fifteen years ago. He was six years of age—as bright a little nipper as ever you see. Oh yes, he said his prayers: said one too many, that he did.... O my God!... Well, it was this way. It was one Christmas Eve, and a young lady as we had for his governess had been telling the little nipper all about Father Christmas—I don't blame her; she's never got over it any more than we have, and never will—... all about Father Christmas, as I was saying; and he drinks it all in with his wide little eyes, as though it was Gospel truth. 'I'll tell Father Christmas to bring me something real nice,' he says. So just before they put him to bed that night he goes to that open fireplace, where you're sitting now, and pops his head up the chimney, and calls out, 'Father Christmas, please bring me to-night a magic lantern, a pair of roller skates, four wax candles, and a box o' them chocolates with the little nuts inside 'em, for Jesus Christ sake, Amen.' Then he goes away from the fire, and I says, 'All right, nipper, I'll bring 'em,' from behind that door, in a voice to make him believe as Father Christmas was answering. Well, he starts to go to bed; but just as he reached them stairs in the passage he runs back, and pops his little head up the chimney again. 'Father Christmas,' he says, 'don't forget the little nuts in the chocolates. I don't want none o' them pink 'uns.' And, O my God! he'd hardly spoken the words when more than half a hundredweight of blazing soot comes slathering down the chimney and falls right on the top of him just where he stood. I tell you there never was a thing seen like it since this world began! The room was filled with black smoke in a second; we were all blinded; we could neither breathe nor see. We couldn't see him, we couldn't find him; and we all stumbled up against one another; and the missus fell insensible on the floor. And him screaming with pain all the time—and I tell you I couldn't find him, though I rushed like a madman all over the room and groped everywhere, and put my hands into the very fire! Then I went too—dropped like a stone. It was all over in a minute. They pulled the rest of us out in the nick of time: but the poor little nipper was burned to death...."
Farmer Jeremy rose from his seat and went to the window. He was shaking all over; but I averted my glance, for it is a terrible thing to see a strong man in the agony of his soul, and the eyes cannot bear it long. "The clouds are breaking," he said; "and, please God, I'll cut 'the Slaughters' to-morrow. But there's one harvest as will never be reaped: and there's one cloud that will never break. Not till the Resurrection Morn. Ah me!"
On the lovely afternoon of an autumn Sunday, about a fortnight after these things, I met Jeremy in the fields, walking the round with his terrier dog.
"Grand weather for farmers," I cried.
"Grand it is, sir," he answered, "and let us be thankful for it."
"Yes," I said; "it has been long enough in coming, and is all the more welcome now it has come."
I felt that the words struck the wrong note; or rather they struck none at all, where a note of music was needed. But I knew not what else to say. Jeremy with all his reserve was less timid and more affluent than I.