a cornfield beguiled and then delayed their steps.

The silence of the moonlight was clear and immense; and they listened to
the trilling of the nightingale in the copse hard by. First they sought to
discover the brown bird in the branches of the poor hedge, and then the
reason of the extraordinary emotion in their hearts. It seemed that all
life was beating in that moment, and they were as it were inflamed to
reach out their hands to life and to grasp it together. Even William
noticed that. And the moon shone on the mist that had gathered on the long
marsh lands of the foreshore. Beyond the trees the land wavered out into
down land, the river gleamed and intensely.

This moment was all the poetry of their lives. The striking of a match to
light his pipe, which had gone out, put the music to flight, and all along
the white road he continued his monologue, interrupted only by the
necessity of puffing at his pipe.

"Mother says that if I had twopence worth of pride in me I wouldn't have
consented to put on the livery; but what I says to mother is, 'What's the
use of having pride if you haven't money?' I tells her that I am rotten
with pride, but my pride is to make money. I can't see that the man what
is willing to remain poor all his life has any pride at all.... But, Lord!
I have argued with mother till I'm sick; she can see nothing further than
the livery; that's what women are--they are that short-sighted.... A lot
of good it would have done me to have carried parcels all my life, and
when I could do four mile an hour no more, to be turned out to die in the
ditch and be buried by the parish. 'Not good enough,' says I. 'If that's
your pride, mother, you may put it in your pipe and smoke it, and as you
'aven't got a pipe, perhaps behind the oven will do as well,'--that's what
I said to her. I saw well enough there was nothing for me but service, and