Cuthbert liked secrets, so he was rather pleased. But Beardy Ned changed the subject.
"It was just here," he said, "just where we're sitting, that I first saw my Liz—I mean her mother. Perhaps, in a manner of speaking, it was where I first saw this one too, but that's neither here nor there. She was just nineteen. She'd been paddling in the stream. I called out to her, and she turned and looked at me. She was in an old frock, but she looked quite the lady. Her eyes was dark, and she was smiling."
He moved his head a little.
"There goes a fox," he said.
He sucked his pipe for a moment in silence. The sound of the fire was like somebody talking to them. But the sound of the river was like something talking to itself.
Then Beardy Ned felt in his pocket and pulled out the end of a candle. It looked like an ordinary candle, with an ordinary wick, and it was just about an inch long.
"This was give me," he said, "by an old feller—James Parkins, that was his name—and there's not another like it in the whole world, and there never won't be again."
Beardy Ned held it in the palm of his hand, as though he were weighing it, while he looked at Cuthbert.
"Have you ever wondered," he said, "where candles goes to—where they goes to when they goes out?"
"No, I don't think so," said Cuthbert. "Where do they go to?"