[THE BUYER OF SORROWS]
n an evening of singular sunset, about the rich beginning of May, the little market-town of Beethorpe was startled by the sound of a trumpet.
Beethorpe was an ancient town, mysteriously sown, centuries ago, like a wandering thistle-down of human life, amid the silence and the nibbling sheep of the great chalk downs. It stood in a hollow of the long smooth billows of pale pasture that suavely melted into the sky on every side. The evening was so still that the little river running across the threshold of the town, and encircling what remained of its old walls, was the noisiest thing to be heard, dominating with its talkative murmur the bedtime hum of the High Street.
Suddenly, as the flamboyance of the sky was on the edge of fading, and the world beginning to wear a forlorn, forgotten look, a trumpet sounded from the western heights above the town, as though the sunset itself had spoken; and the people in Beethorpe, looking up, saw three horsemen against the lurid sky.
Three times the trumpet blew.
And the simple folk of Beethorpe, tumbling out into the street at the summons, and looking to the west with sleepy bewilderment, asked themselves: Was it the last trumpet? Or was it the long-threatened invasion of the King of France?
Again the trumpet blew, and then the braver of the young men of the town hastened up the hill to learn its meaning.