<h2><SPAN name="page274"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>XXXVI.</h2>
<p><span class="smcap">So</span> with the days and the months
Nan’s sorrows fell from her, and their harder shapes were
lost in her remembrance; and the new days brought a new
peace—perhaps even a new dullness. For this was a
dull place, this street of flat walls, and grime, and anxious
passengers. But what mattered mere dullness of externals
when she had hard work to do, and a son to take pride in?</p>
<p>For Nora’s sorrows, who shall speak? There was a
hospital bed that she knew well, a pillow whereon a slaty face
wasted and grew blank of meaning. And in the end there was
a day of driving wet in a clayey cemetery, a day of loneliness,
and wonder, and dull calm.</p>
<p>But that day went with the others, and that year went.
The streets grew sloppy with winter, dusty with summer: and smoky
geraniums struggled into bloom on window-sills, and died
off. Miles away the Forest gowned itself anew in green, in
brown and in white; and in green the exiles saw it, once a year:
but all its dresses were spread for Bessy still, in her
dreams.</p>
<p><SPAN name="page275"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>Two
years were gone, and Johnny was within five months of twenty-one,
and the end of his apprenticeship, when on a brave August day he
walked in the Forest alone. There would be no Forest
excursion for him next year, for then, with good fortune, he
would be upon the seas. For the firm had promised him the
recommendation that would give him a year’s voyaging as
fourth engineer.</p>
<p>Bessy and Nora were sharing the holiday, but they were left to
rest at Bob Smallpiece’s cottage. Bob, vast, brown,
and leathery, was much as ever. He had seen Johnny and
Bessy once each year, but not their mother, since—well
since he had gone to London to see his sister. He was not
sure whether he should go up to London again soon, or not.
Meantime he made tea for his visitors.</p>
<p>They had climbed the hill to gran’dad’s grave, and
they had found it green and neat: they had seen another,
fresh-closed, beside it, and wondered who was buried there; they
had gathered flowers in Monk Wood, and they had stayed long in
Loughton Camp; they had come again to the cottage on the
glen-side, and Johnny had had to stoop at the door to save his
hat, for indeed he was within two inches as big as Bob Smallpiece
himself; and now Johnny, being alone, took the path to Wormleyton
Pits. It was six years since he <SPAN name="page276"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>had gone that way last, and he might
never go that way again.</p>
<p>Mainly his way lay as it had lain when he carried the basket
of sloes, that night when his grandfather had hunted his last
moth. Johnny had left childish fancies years behind him,
and now the trees were trees merely, one much as the rest, though
green and cheerful in the sunlight. But even as on that
night his mind had run on London, the longed-for London that was
his home now, and stale with familiarity, so now he turned over
once more the mystery of the old man’s cutting off: and
with as little foreknowledge of the next chances in life’s
hatful.</p>
<p>Here branched the track by which he had made for Theydon;
there was the tree under which he had last seen the old
man’s lantern-light; and then the slade opened, glorious
with heather. Brambles and bushes about the pits were
changed—this grown higher and wider, that withered off; and
the pits—the smaller pits, at least, seemed shallow enough
holes under the eyes of a man of near six feet. The deepest
pit—<i>the</i> pit—was farthest; and Johnny could see
a man, whose figure seemed vaguely familiar, sitting on its
edge.</p>
<p>He picked his way across the broken ground and came to the pit
on the side opposite to the stranger. There was the hole
where the old man had taken his death-blow. Perhaps the
bottom had risen an inch or <SPAN name="page277"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>so because of gravel-washings; but
the big stone in the middle was still plain to see.</p>
<p>The man opposite was trimming wooden pegs with a
pocket-knife. He wore corduroys, of a cut that Johnny held
in remembrance. Johnny watched for a few seconds, and then
the man turned up a leathery brown face, and Johnny knew
him. It was Amos Honeywell, notable as a poacher, and chief
of a family of poachers. Amos put a peg into his pocket and
began on another.</p>
<p>“Well, Amos!” called Johnny across the pit;
“you don’t know me!”</p>
<p>The man looked up, and stared. “No,” he
said, “I dun’t.”</p>
<p>Johnny gave him his name.</p>
<p>“What?” answered Amos, putting away his peg
unfinished. “Johnny May? The boy as used to be
along o’ oad May the butterfly man, as died in a axdent in
this ’ere very pit?”</p>
<p>“Yes—if it was an accident.”</p>
<p>“Oh, it was that all right ’nough. But, why,
ye’re twice as tall: an’ ’taren’t so
long, nayther.” Amos paused, staring mightily at
Johnny, and slapped his thigh. “Why,” he said,
“it’s the curiousest thing in natur, seein’ you
now, an’ here too. Did ye see e’er a funeral
las’ Wednesday?”</p>
<p>“No—where?”</p>
<p><SPAN name="page278"></SPAN><span class="pagenum">p.
278</span>“Up to chu’ch where yer
gran’father’s buried. But
no—y’aren’t livin’ hereabout now,
o’ coase. Well it is the rarest conglomeration ever I
see, me seein’ you ’ere at this ’ere very pit,
an’ ’im buried on’y las’ Wednesday,
an’ died in a accident too. Fell off a rick, he
did.”</p>
<p>“An’ who was he?”</p>
<p>“Coopersale chap, he was, name o’ Stiles.
Lived here ’bout six year. But coase you
wud’n’ know ’bout him; ’twere he as did
the accident.”</p>
<p>“Did the accident? What d’ye
mean?”</p>
<p>Amos Honeywell got up from his seat, and jerked his thumb
toward the pit-bottom. “This here one,” he
said. “Yer gran’father.”</p>
<p>“D’ you mean he killed him?”</p>
<p>“Dun’t much matter what ye call it now the
chap’s dead, but I wouldn’t put it killed—not
meanin’.” Amos Honeywell came slouching along
the pit-edge, talking as he came. “See, he was a
Coopersale chap an’ new here, an’ knowed few.
Well, he sees this here’s a likely spot for a rabbit or so,
an’ he puts up a few pegs an’ a wire or two, just
arter dark: <i>you</i> know. In the middle of it he sees a
strange oad chap comin’ with a lantern,
searchin’—searchin’ what for? Why for
wires, he thinks, o’ coase. He hides in some
brambles, but t’oad chap gets nigher an’ nigher
an’ presen’ly Stiles he sees he’s about
caught. So he ups on a sudden an’ knocks the oad chap
over, an’ grabs the wires an’ then <SPAN name="page279"></SPAN><span class="pagenum"></span>he
bolts. Oad chap goes over into pit of a lump, an’ he
falls awk’ard an’—an’ well—there
y’are!”</p>
<p>“And how long ha’ you known this?”</p>
<p>“<i>Knowed</i> it? Knowed it all time, same as
others.”</p>
<p>“An’ never said a word of it, nor told the
police?”</p>
<p>“Why no,” Amos answered, with honest
indignation. “Wudn’t hev us get the poer chap
in trouble, wud ye?”</p>
<p>And this was the mystery: nothing of wonder at all, nothing
but a casual crossing of ways: just a chance from the hatful,
like all the rest of it. And Amos—well, he was right,
too, by such lights as he could see.</p>
<p style="text-align: center">.
. .
. . .</p>
<p>Light was low behind the hills, and dusk dimmed the
keeper’s honest face as he waved his friends goodbye.
Yes, he would come to them in London, one of these days.
Soon? Well, then, soon.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p>Together the three went down the scented lanes, where the
white ghost-moths began to fly, and so into the world of new
adventure.</p>
<div class="gapspace"> </div>
<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE
END.</span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />