“Not us,” Alys declared roundly, bringing the ferry to the pier as Alinor got off, and turned to help the woman off the ferry. “We don’t believe in stuff like that. Good night!” she called. “See you tomorrow.”

“I did know about Red,” Alinor remarked mildly as Alys tied the ferry up and came up the steps.

“I know you did; but we can’t say things like that,” Alys said abruptly. “Not even to Mrs. Bellman. Anyway, I suppose he’s under a hedge somewhere,” she said.

“We’ll look,” Alinor promised her. “And I have an egg for your tea. A dove egg.”

“Lord, she exceeded herself!” Alys exclaimed. “How lucky are we? Two tiny eggs! She’s spoiling us. You go that way, I’ll go this. We’ll find him.”

The dog was not far from the house. He had gone quietly, as wise old dogs do, to die alone. It was Alinor who found him, as she knew she would, curled as if he was asleep; but his coat was cool and his nose was cold and his eyes were shut.

“The ground’s too hard for us to bury him,” Alys said. “What’ll we do? It doesn’t seem right to burn him, or put him on the midden.”

“I’ll dig a hole in the soft mud of the mire,” Alinor said. “You go and start dinner. I won’t be long.”

She took a shovel from the lean-to in the fruit garden and went out on one of the little shingle paths that led out into the deep mire. It would be flooded at high tide, but now, as the moon came up and the cold wind blew across the water, it was dry enough for her to walk along and to dig a deep hole in the soft mud at the side of the track.

When the pit was broad enough and deep enough she took the stiffening body, which now seemed so small and light, and laid it in the bottom of the hole. She knew that Ned would ask her if his dog had been properly buried, and that he would trust her. She filled the grave with shingle from the path to keep the body deep under the moving silt of the harbor floor. “Good-bye, Red,” she said gently. “You’re a very good dog.”

She shoveled a pile of silt and went to tamp it down when a glint of silver caught her eye, bright as a star in the dark night sky. She knelt down and found a tiny coin, shaved and thin but twinkling brightly in the mud. It was faerie gold, a coin from the old people, from the old days, with a crest on one side and a crown on the other, too rubbed and worn to be deciphered, too old to be recognized, too light to be valuable.

“Thank you,” Alinor said to Red. She accepted without a second thought that this was his burial fee, which he had sent to her from the other side, a country as far away and as misty as the distant side of the mire. “God bless, good dog. Godspeed.”