It was getting later and the lights were doused in this hamlet. Sea went by in silence, not one man saw us pass. Only a little child looking from an upstairs window at the moon saw me go by. He raised his hand like a salute and his eyes sought mine, and he smiled a friendly, open little smile. I neither smiled nor waved. I hardly saw him, and I felt nothing when I saw his mouth turn down in disappointment that the stranger on the horse had not acknowledged him. I did not care. He would be worse disappointed than that before tomorrow was out. And I did not wish to be kindly to little children. No one had ever had a kind word for me when I was his age. No one had a kind word thereafter. Except she was kind to me. In her own light way, she had loved me. But that was little comfort now.

Quite the contrary.

It was a scattered little village this one. A public house with a lantern in the window the last building along the road, a little fir tree nailed above the door. I thought idly that perhaps I should stop and go in and eat and take a drink. I thought wearily of a bed and a warm fire. But Sea kept on walking and I did not care very much that I was cold and tired and hungry. Indeed I did not care at all. Sea’s head pointed due north and he scanned the road ahead of us with his shifting ears. I wondered idly what he heard.

What I could hear, what sung in my ears so that I shook my head irritably, was a high singing noise. Too high for human voices, too sweet for a squeaking hinge. It had started as soon as I had got into the saddle this afternoon, at Selsey. And it was calling me louder and clearer all along the road. I stuck my finger in one ear and then the other. I could not block it out and I could not clear it. I shrugged. It was all one with the clamminess of my skin and the cold inside my belly. The way my hands trembled when I did not remember to watch them and keep them steady. A singing in the air made little difference either way.