Turkey and I had gone the
night of our adventure with Bogbonny's bull. That story was now far
off in the past, but I did not relish the dull shine of the water in
the hollow, notwithstanding. In fact I owed the greater part of the
courage I possessed--and it was little enough for my needs--to Missy.
I dared not have gone on my own two legs. It was not that I could so
easily run away with four instead, but that somehow I was lifted above
the ordinary level of fear by being upon her back. I think many men
draw their courage out of their horses.

At length I came in sight of the keeper's farm; and just at that
moment the moon peeped from behind a hill, throwing as long shadows as
the setting sun, but in the other direction. The shadows were very
different too. Somehow they were liker to the light that made them
than the sun-shadows are to the sunlight. Both the light and the
shadows of the moon were strange and fearful to me. The sunlight and
its shadows are all so strong and so real and so friendly, you seem to
know all about them; they belong to your house, and they sweep all
fear and dismay out of honest people's hearts. But with the moon and
its shadows it is very different indeed. The fact is, the moon is
trying to do what she cannot do. She is trying to dispel a great
sun-shadow--for the night is just the gathering into one mass of all
the shadows of the sun. She is not able for this, for her light is not
her own; it is second-hand from the sun himself; and her shadows
therefore also are second-hand shadows, pieces cut out of the great
sun-shadow, and coloured a little with the moon's yellowness. If I
were writing for grown people I should tell them that those who
understand things because they think about them, and ask God to teach
them, walk in the sunlight; and others, who take things because other
people tell them so, are always walking in the strange moonlight, and
are subject to no end of stumbles and terrors, for they hardly know
light from darkness. Well, at first, the moon frightened me a
little--she looked so knowing, and yet all she said round about me was
so strange. But I rode quietly up to the back of the yard where the
ricks stood, got off Missy and fastened the bridle to the gate, and
walked across to the cart-shed, where the moon was shining upon the
ladder leading up to the loft. I climbed the ladder, and after several
failures succeeded in finding how the door was fastened. When I opened
it, the