For a full hour after Nip and her grandfather slept the sleep of the innocent in their beds, she sat up watching the storm, with no surprise at this unrest of the elements. No less a cataclysm was adequate to the passing of Methusalem. This sympathy of Nature indeed relieved her, some of her stoniness melted, and her face—as if in reciprocation—became as deluged as the face of the earth-mother. All the long years with Methusalem passed before her vision, ever since that first meeting of theirs outside the Watch Vessel: their common adventures in sunshine and snow, in mud and rain, her whip only an extra tail for him to whisk off his flies withal: ah, the long martyrdom from those flies, especially the nose-fly that spoilt the glory of July. She heard again that queer tick-tack of his hoofs, his whinnying, his coughing, saw the spasmodic shudder of his shoulder-joints, the peculiar gulp with which he took his drench. How often they had gone together to have a nail fixed, or his shoes roughed for the winter! What silly alarms he had felt, when she had had to soothe him like a mother, coax him to pass something, and on the other hand what a skill beyond hers in going unguided through the moonless, swift-fallen winter night! How happily he had nibbled at the beans in his corner-crib or the oats in his manger, what time he was brushed and combed—would that beloved mane get into rats’-tails no more? Was she never again to feel that soft nose against her cheek in a love passing the love of man? Could all this cheery laborious vitality have ended, be one with the dust she had so often brushed from his fetlocks? That joy which had set him frisking like an uncouth kitten when he was released from the shafts, was it not to be his now that he was freed for ever? Was he to be nothing but a carcase? Nay—horror upon horror—would he survive only as glove-or boot-buttons, as that wretch of a Skindle calculated? Would that triumphant tail wave only at human funerals, his own last rites unpaid? A remembrance of her glimpse at the charnel-house made her almost sick. Fed to the foxhounds perhaps! Could such things be in a God-governed world?

And her cart too would go—of the old life there would be nothing left any more. She could see the bill pasted up on the barn-doors: “Carrier’s Cart on Springs, with Set of Harness, Cart Gear, Back Bands, Belly Bands——” But what nonsense! Who would advertise such a ramshackle ruin? “A Shabby, Cracked Canvas Tilt, Patched with Sacking”—fancy that on a poster! No, like its horse, it would be adjudged fit only to be broken up. Perhaps somebody wearing Methusalem on his shoes would sit on the bar of a stile made of its axle-tree.

She woke from her reverie and to the wetness of her face, streaming with bitter-sweet tears. The moon rode almost full, and in the pale blue spread of sky sparse stars shone, one or two twinkling. She opened the door and went out into the night. What delicious wafts of smells after the long mugginess of the day! The elms and poplars rose in mystic lines bordering the great bare spaces. Surely the death of Methusalem had been but a nightmare—if she went to the stable, there would he be as usual, snug and safe in his straw. She sped thither, over the sodden grass, with absolute conviction. Alas, the same endless emptiness yawned, the manger looked strange and tragic in the moonlight. She thought of a divine infant once lying in one, wrapped in his swaddling-clothes, and then looking up skywards she saw a figure hovering. Yes, it was—it was the Angel-Mother, so beautiful in the azure light. At the sight all her anguish was dissolved in sweetness. “Mother! Mother!” she cried, stretching up her arms to the vision. “Comfort thee, my child!” came the dulcet tones. “Methusalem is not dead, but sleeping!”

At the glad news Jinny burst into tears, and, in the mist they made, her mother faded away. But she walked in soft happiness back to the house, and said her prayers of gratitude and went believingly to bed and slept as when she was a babe.

So long did she sleep that when she woke, the old man was standing over her again, just as the morning before, save that now he was in his everyday earth-coloured smock and wore a frown instead of a wedding-look, and the sunshine was streaming into the room.

“Where’s my breakfus, Jinny?” he said grumpily.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. “I must have overslept myself.” And then she remembered Mr. Pennymole’s story, and a smile came over her face.

“There’s nawthen to laugh at,” he said savagely. “Ef ye goo out at bull’s noon, ye’re bound to forgit my breakfus. And that eatin’ his head off too! Ye know there’s no work for him. Ye dedn’t want to bring him back.”

“Back?” she almost screamed. “Is Methusalem back?”

“As ef ye dedn’t know!” he said, disgusted.

Disregarding him and everything else, she sprang out of bed, rolling the blanket round her, and with bare feet she sped to the stable. But she had hardly got outside before the jet of hope had sunk back. It was but another of her grandfather’s delusions.

But no! O incredible, miraculous, enchanting spectacle! There he was, the dear old beast, not dead but sleeping, exactly as the Angel-Mother had said, not a hair of his mane injured, not an inch of his tail less, and never did two Polynesian lovers rub noses half so passionately as this happy pair.

Jinny would have rubbed his nose still more adoringly had she known—as she knew later—the rÔle it had played in his salvation. The threatening thunder-clouds had made Mr. Skindle put off his slaughtering till the morning, so that he himself might get home before the storm broke. The doomed horses he left shut in his field—who cared whether they got wet? But as soon as the coast was clear of Skindle and his latest-lingering myrmidons, Methusalem had simply lifted the latch of the gate with his nose and gone home. Mr. Skindle, oblivious of this accomplishment of his, though he had seen it practised on his never-forgotten journey with Jinny, had imagined him conclusively corralled. Mr. Charles Mott, returning with some boon companions from a distant hostelry where the draughts were more generous than he was allowed at “The Black Sheep,” was among the few who saw the noble animal hurrying homewards, and he told Jinny the next Tuesday that she ought to enter Methusalem for the Colchester Stakes. His unusual rate of motion was also reported by Miss Gentry, who, lying awake with a headache after the excitement of the day, had heard him snort past her window just when the storm was ebbing. He must have sagely sheltered while it raged and have arrived at Blackwater Hall soon after Jinny had beheld her vision.

But as yet Jinny attributed the miracle to her Angel-Mother. And what a happy Sunday morning was that, with the church bells all clearly ringing “Come and thank God and her!” She did not fail to obey them, though not without a sharp turn in that padlock, and with the little key safe in her bosom. And having happily ascertained from Mother Gander that the five-pound note was valid in pieces, she dropped them into Mr. Skindle’s letter-box together with remarks that drew heavily on her Spelling-Book’s “Noun Adjectives of Four Syllables.” Cadaverous (Belonging to a Carcase); Execrable (Hateful, Accursed); Sophistical (Captious, Deceitful); Sulphureous (Full of Brimstone); and Vindictive (Belonging to an Apology) were among her proudest specimens. They were not calculated to encourage Mr. Skindle’s matrimonial hopes.

WINTER’S TALE