the straw; and the mare was sleeping--her
head between her nurse's knees.

That night I woke at two o'clock, to find it bright as day, almost, with
moonlight coming in through the flimsy curtains. And, smitten with the
feeling which comes to us creatures of routine so rarely--of what beauty
and strangeness we let slip by without ever stretching out hand to grasp
it--I got up, dressed, stole downstairs, and out.

Never was such a night of frozen beauty, never such dream-tranquillity.
The wind had dropped, and the silence was such that one hardly liked to
tread even on the grass. From the lawn and fields there seemed to be a
mist rising--in truth, the moonlight caught on the dewy buttercups; and
across this ghostly radiance the shadows of the yew-trees fell in dense
black bars. Suddenly, I bethought me of the mare. How was she faring,
this marvellous night? Very softly opening the door into the yard, I
tiptoed across. A light was burning in her box. And I could hear her
making the same half-human noise she had made in the afternoon, as if
wondering at her feelings; and instantly the voice of the bearded man
talking to her as one might talk to a child: "Oover, me darlin'; yu've
a-been long enough o' that side. Wa-ay, my swate--yu let old Jack turn
'u, then!" Then came a scuffling in the straw, a thud, again that
half-human sigh, and his voice: "Putt your 'ead to piller, that's my
dandy gel. Old Jack wouldn' 'urt 'u; no more'n ef 'u was the queen!"
Then only her quick breathing could be heard, and his cough and mutter,
as he settled down once more to his long vigil. I crept very softly up
to the window, but she heard me at once; and at the movement of her head
the old fellow sat up, blinking his eyes out of the bush of his grizzled
hair and beard. Opening the door, I said:

"May I come in?"

"Oo, ay! Come in, Zurr, if 'u'm a mind to."

I sat down beside him on a sack, and for some time we did not speak,
taking each other in. One of his legs was lame, so that he had to keep
it stretched out all the time; and awfully tired he looked, grey-tired.

"You're a great nurse!" I said at last. "It must be hard work, watching
out here all night."

His eyes twinkled; they were of that bright grey kind through which the
soul looks out.

"Aw, no!" he said. "Ah don't grudge it vur a dumb animal. Poor
things--they can't 'elp theirzelves. Many's the naight ah've zat up with
'orses and beasts tu. 'Tes en me--can't bear to zee dumb