slow advance. The music from Tchaichowsky
admonished it, as a matter of form, from far off, then sharply,
summarily, from a lessening distance. The woodstack was puzzled, vaguely
worried. It stopped, dubiously moved to one side, and pursued its
cautious way a little uncertainly.

Urquhart, without his chauffeur this time, was driving over the
speed-limit, Peter perceived. He usually did. But he ought to slacken
his pace now, or he would miss Peter by the wall. He was nearing the
woodstack, just going to pass it, with a clear two yards between. It was
not his doing: it was the woodstack that suddenly lessened the distance,
lurching over it, taking the middle of the road.

Peter cried, "Oh, don't--oh, _don't_," idiotically, sprawling on hands
and knees.

The car swung sharply about like a tugged horse; sprang to the other side
of the road, hung poised on a wheel, as near as possible capsized. A less
violent jerk and it would have gone clean over the woodstack that lay in
the road on the top of its bearer.

By the time Peter got there, Urquhart had lifted the burden from the old
bent figure that lay face downwards. Gently he turned it over, and they
looked on a thin old face gone grey with more than age.

"He can't be," said Urquhart. "He can't be. I didn't touch him."

Peter said nothing. His eyes rested on the broken end of a chestnut-stick
protruding from the faggot, dangling loose by its bark. Urquhart's glance
followed his.

"I see," said Urquhart quietly. "That did it. The lamp or something must
have struck it and knocked him over. Poor old chap." Urquhart's hand
shook over the still heart. Peter gave him the whisky flask. Two minutes
passed. It was no good.

"His heart must have been bad," said Urquhart, and the soft tones of his
pleasant voice were harsh and unsteady. "Shock, I suppose. How--how
absolutely awful."

How absolutely incongruous, Peter was dully thinking. Urquhart and
tragedy; Urquhart and death. It was that which blackened the radiant
morning, not the mercifully abrupt cessation of a worn-out life. For
Peter death had two sharply differentiated aspects--one of release to
the tired and old, for whom the grasshopper was a burden; the other of
an unthinkable blackness of tragedy--sheer sharp loss that knew no
compensation. It was not with this bitter face that death had stepped
into their lives on this clear morning. One could imagine that weary
figure glad to end his wayfaring so; one could e