t such a mortification, added to his own shamed sense of having
disappointed Da Boase, would burden him so that he could never be happy
again. And only a couple of hours earlier he had realised for the first
time how splendid somehow life and everything in it was, himself
included ... and now all was over. He sat staring at the congealed
remains of a pasty on his plate. He did not see how it was possible to
go on living.

Suddenly a soft, very small hand slid into his lap under cover of the
table's corner, and Phoebe's fingers curled round his as she
whispered: "Don't 'ee mind, Ishmael. Don't cry. Tell 'ee what, I'll
dance weth 'ee, so I will."

"I'm not cryen'." Ishmael's accent was always most marked when he was
struggling with emotion. "I'm not cryen' toall. But I don't mind if I do
dance a bit weth 'ee if you want me to."

A grinding of chair legs over the flags proclaimed the end of the feast,
and the Parson, who, rather to Ishmael's resentment, was smiling as
though nothing had been the matter, caught hold of him with one hand and
of Phoebe with the other and led the way to the barn.

Out-of-doors the air struck exquisitely cool and fresh to heated faces;
the courtyard was lapped in shadow, but once through and in the farmyard
the moon was visible, still near the horizon and swimming up inflated,
globulous, like a vast aureate bubble. Save for that one glow everything
looked as chill as underseas; the whitewashed walls of the out-buildings
glimmered faintly, the heaped corn had paled to a greyish silver, the
shadows were blue as quiet pools. The whole world seemed to have been
washed clean by the moonlight.

The sense of calm only lasted as far as the door of the barn--not as far
to the ear, for the sounds of merry-making came gustily out before the
opening of the door showed an oblong of glowing orange that sent a shaft
into the night, to fade into the darkness that it deepened. It was not
quite as hot in the barn as it had been in the kitchen, for the building
was much loftier and boasted no fire. Lanterns swung from the beams,
throwing upwards bars of shadow that criss-crossed with the rafters and
trembled slightly as the flames flickered, so that the whole roof seemed
spun over by some gigantic spider's web, while the shadow-patterns
thrown by the lanterns on to the floor below looked like great spiders
dropped from the meshes. In this impalpable tangle sat the men and
women--tenants of cottages, labourer