winter's afternoon Polchester with the thin covering of snow upon
its roofs sparkled like a city under glass. The Cathedral was dim in
the mist of the early dusk and the sun, setting behind the hill,
with its last rays caught the windows so that they blazed through
the haze like smoking fires. Whilst Maggie and her uncle stood there
the bells began to ring for Evensong, and the sound like a faint
echo seemed to come from behind them out of the wood. In the spring
all the Polchester orchards would be white and pink with blossom, in
the summer the river that encircled the city wall would run like a
blue scarf between its green sloping hills--now there was frost and
snow and mist with the fires smouldering at its heart. She gazed at
it now as she had never gazed at it before. She was going into it
now. Her life was beginning at last. When the sun had left the
windows and the walls were grey she turned back into the wood and
led the way silently towards home.

The house that night was very strange with her father dead in it.
She sat, because she thought it her duty, in his bedroom. He lay on
his bed, with his beard carefully combed and brushed now, spread out
upon the sheet. His closed eyes and mouth gave him a grave and
reverend appearance which he had never worn in his life. He lay
there, under the flickering candle-light, like some saint who at
length, after a life of severe discipline, had entered into the joy
of his Lord. Beneath the bed was the big black box.

Maggie did not look at her father. She sat there, near the dark
window, her hands folded on her lap. She thought of nothing at all
except the rats. She was not afraid of them but they worried her.
They had been a trouble in the house for a long time past, poison
had been laid for them and they had refused to take it. They had