An hour later Mr. Sumption had left the green hill and was walking towards a little hamlet that showed its gables at the bend of the lane. Now that his grief was spent, drunk up by the earth like a storm, he remembered that he was hungry, and set out to hunt for food. There was an inn at the beginning of the street, a low house slopped with yellow paint and swinging the sign of the Star across the road. Mr. Sumption walked in and asked the landlady for breakfast; then, upon her stare, changed his demand to dinner, whereat she told him that the Star did not give dinners, and that there was a war on. However, he managed at last to persuade her to let him have some dry bread and tea, and a quarter of an hour later he was making the best of them in a little green, sunless parlour, rather pleasantly stuffy with the ghosts of bygone pipes and pots.

The room was in the front of the house, and the shadow of the inn lay across the road, licking the bottom of the walls of the houses opposite. Above it they rose into a yellow glare of sunshine, and their roofs were bitten against a heavy blue sky. From quite near came the pleasant chink of iron, and craning his head he saw the daubed colours of a smith and wheelwright on a door a little further down the street. It comforted him to think that there should be a smith so near him, and all through his meal he listened to the clink and thud, with sometimes the clatter of new-shod hoofs in the road.

When he had finished his dinner and paid his shilling he went out and up beyond the shadow of the inn to the [309] smith’s door. The name of the hamlet was Lion’s Green, and he gathered he was some ten miles from home, beyond Horeham and Mystole. It would not take him more than a couple of hours to get back with his great stride, so there was time for him to linger and put off the evil hour when he must confront Mrs. Hubble and explain why he had been out all night. Meantime he would go and watch the smith.

There was no house opposite the forge, and the doorway was full of sunshine, which streamed into the red glare of the furnace. Mr. Sumption stood in the mixing light, a tall black figure, leaning against the doorpost. He had smoothed his creased and grass-stained clothes a little, and taken out the straws that had stuck in his hair, but he always looked ill-shaved at the best of times, and to-day his face was nearly swallowed up in his beard. The smith was working single-hand, and had no time to stare at his visitor. He wondered a little who he was, for though he wore black clothes like a minister, he was in other respects more like a tramp.

“Good afternoon,” said Mr. Sumption suddenly.

“Good afternoon,” said the smith, hesitating whether he should add “sir,” but deciding not to.

“You seem pretty busy.”

“Reckon I am—unaccountable busy. I’m aloan now—my man went last week. Thought I wur saafe wud a man of forty-eight, but now they raise the age limit to fifty, and off he goes into the Veterinary Corps.”

“Shall I give you a hand?”

The smith stared.

“I’ve done a lot of smith’s work,” continued Mr. Sumption eagerly. “There’s nothing I can’t do with hoof and iron.”

The smith hesitated; then he saw the visitor’s arms as he took off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves.

[310]

“Well, maybe ... if you know aught ... there’s the liddle cob thur wants a shoe.”

A few men and boys were in the smithy, and they looked at each other and whispered a little. They had never seen such swingeing, hairy arms as Mr. Sumption’s.

A smile was fighting its way across the stubble on the minister’s face. He cracked his joints wi............