He waved his hand with a courtly air, sniffed sadly the aroma of Judy’s beans and onions, and turned his back on her cheery domain. They watched him going down the lane in the dim, with his stuffed owl under his arm and the same old fur cap on his head that he had worn upon his arrival. Just Dog walked close beside him, with a tail that had apparently no wag left in it. A weird moon with a cloud-ribbed face was rising over the Hill of the Mist. The surging of wind in the tree branches was very mournful.

Rae’s face crumpled up.

“I…I…think I’d like to cry,” she said chokily. “Do you remember the night he came? You sent me to show him the way to the granary and he said ‘Good-night, little Cuddles,’ as he went up the stair. I felt he was an old friend then.”

“Sure and I wish I’d niver found fault wid him for playing his fiddle in the graveyard,” said Judy. “Maybe the poor soul will niver get a taste ave dape apple pie again. That wife av his was wondering what wud become av his soul but I’m wondering what’s going to happen to his poor body.”

“He was a genial old soul,” said Mrs. Binnie.

“There was something so quaint about him,” whimpered May.

Pat wanted to cry but wouldn’t because May was doing it. She slipped an arm about Judy, who, somehow, was looking strangely old.

“Anyway, we’ve got Silver Bush and you left,” she whispered.

Judy poked the fire fiercely.

“Sure and it’s a could world and we must all do our bist to bring a liddle warmth into it,” she said briskly.

And so passed Josiah Tillytuck from the annals of Silver Bush.

CHAPTER 46