‘I can’t thank you enough.’ The stranger shook him warmly by the hand. ‘Let me give you this leaflet. It enlarges a little on what we have been saying. I can see you are a fellow spirit, a sympathizer. Good luck to you!’

Flo, the candle in her lantern burnt nearly to its end and her legs cramped from the huddled position in which she was trying to keep herself warm on Tom’s doorstep, heard his uneven step, and his indignant muttering, approaching.

‘Fellow bloody spirit indeed, bloody lunatic, what’s he bloody think he’s bloody talking about I’d like to know, murder indeed – bloody barmy if you ask me.’

Terrified, she stood up quickly and backed up against the door, holding the lantern in front of her face.

‘What?’ Tom was almost as startled as she was. ‘What’s this then?’

‘I’ve a message from Mr Glass, will you beat for him tomorrow, 8.30 Batty Clump?’

‘Hold on a minute. Here, come inside. There’s a madman I’ve just left out on the road wants to know where they’re shooting tomorrow – we don’t want him to hear us. Come on in, don’t be afraid, it’s only old Tom.’

He led the way into the house and left her hesitating in the dark while he went through into the bedroom and put his coat, rabbit and all, on the bed before coming back into the kitchen to light the lamp on the table.

‘That’s better.’ He turned to look at her. ‘Now then, what’s all this? Mr Glass wants me to beat, does he? Who’s fallen out then?’

She told him about her father’s back and repeated the message from Mr Glass, keeping her eyes fixed on Tom’s face and trying not to look at his right hand, which had blood on it.

‘What d’you think of that then?’ he said nodding towards the leaflet which he had put down on the table.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You can read, can’t you? More than I can.’

‘The Rights of Animals,’ she read obediently. ‘A Vindi … vindi … something of the doctor-something of Universal Kinship.’

‘Rights of Animals indeed. Animals haven’t got rights, have they?’

‘I shouldn’t think so. I don’t know.’

‘Except to hunt and be hunted. Spot here thinks she’s a right to her dinner. Here then, look what I’ve got.’

He fumbled about on the chimney-piece and produced a stick of liquorice.

‘That’s for being a good girl and waiting so long.’

‘Thank you, Mr Harker.’ She took it and ran. She ran all the way home. On the way she threw the stick of liquorice into the ditch. The hand which had given it to her had had blood on it, and had he not come in muttering about murder?

Cornelius Cardew continued on his way much encouraged by his encounter. It seemed to him that among these country people there was a directness of understanding, an instant and often wordless appreciation, which was extraordinarily heartening. He imagined that good man by his fireside, his worthy wife ladling out some sort of health-giving hot-pot (fairly health-giving anyway, for it was too much to hope the family might be so enlightened as already to have forsworn meat) while the children gathered round to listen to the words he would be reading to them from the pamphlet in his hand, words which would strike them first as strange and then as startling and then as scintillating with a fine refulgent light which made everything new and plain and held out to them quite irresistibly the clear necessity that they, the labouring poor, exploited by the rich, should connect themselves by sympathetic alliance with the animals, exploited by all men.