It was not, however, until this moment of quiet above Latchetts that he had been moved to sorrow for him.
Clink-clink! came the faint sound from the valley; and Brat's eyes travelled down from Tanbitches to the cottage at its foot. The blacksmith's, that was. A quarter of a mile west of the village. A tiny black square by the roadside it had been on the map; now it was a small building with a black chimney and an occupant who made musical sounds with a hammer.
The whole scene was very like the picture from which he had acquired his first-year French. Voila le forgeron. It needed only a cure coming from the church. And a postman on a bicycle between the forge and the village.
Brat slid from Timber's back, from long habit loosened the girths as if he saddled up hours ago, and sat down with his back to the gorse and juniper to feast his eyes on this primer of the English countryside.
15
The great clouds sailed up and past, the sunlight flickered and ran, the uncertain soft wind edged in and out of the junipers and made soft scufflings in the grass. Timber made small sounds with his bit, and cropped turf in a tentative and superior fashion. Brat sank into a daze of pleasure and ceased altogether from conscious thought.
He was roused by the swift fling-up of Timber's head, and almost at the same moment a female voice behind him said, as if it were a chant and rhymed:
"Don't look,
Don't move,
Shut your eyes