Half-Past Bedtime

by Sir H. H. Bashford

"Why is it up there?" asked Cuthbert.

Tod stared at them as if he were trying to read their hearts.

"Have you courage?" he asked.

It was a difficult question. They told him that they hoped so, but that they weren't quite sure.

"Well, if you have," he said, "and you'd like to come back here to-night, just about half-past twelve, you'll be able to see something that nobody alive has ever seen or will see again."

Cuthbert and Edward looked at one another. It would be a six-mile walk, and they would have to start about eleven o'clock, and they would have to go to bed first and creep out of their houses without anybody knowing. The moon would have sunk, too, so that it would be quite dark. They both felt a little queer inside. But they promised to come, and agreed to meet at eleven o'clock near St Peter's Church.

Cuthbert was there first, just before the clock struck. Everybody was in bed, and he had slipped out unnoticed. But his heart sank a little as he ran down the empty street and saw no Edward at the corner waiting for him. But Edward came just as the clock struck, and the night seemed less dark now that there were two of them, and soon they were out of the town and running close together between the hedges of the country road. Once a motor-car came travelling toward them, almost blinding them with the glare of its head-lamps; but after they had left the road and struck across the fields the night was so still that they could almost have heard a star drop.

It was so still that they spoke in whispers, and so dark that they sometimes tripped; and once when they stopped for a moment to take breath, a star did drop, and they almost heard it. Presently, when their eyes became used to the darkness, they could see the dim outline of the hills, and the faint ribbon of the Milky Way rising like smoke from Cæsar's Camp. At the edge of the bracken they found Tod waiting for them.

"Come along," he said, "only don't go too fast," and they began to climb through the belt of trees out on to the hillside beyond. The grass was short here and slippery with dew, with glimmers of chalk beneath it where the turf was broken; and it was so steep that half-way up Tod stopped to fight for his breath.

"It's all right," he said. "I'll be better in a moment," and as they stood waiting for him and looking back, the country behind them seemed to have vanished into a lake of darkness. Then they began to climb again, their boots slipping, and suddenly as they climbed they smelt a new smell—a strange sort of acrid, sweet smell, as of turf-fires burning above them.