silence like the silence in the heart of a lake, and there came
through it like the flame of a rushlight the faint joyful voices ever
and always.

One morning he heard music somewhere outside the door, and as the day
passed it grew louder and louder until it drowned the faint joyful
voices, and even Winny's cry upon the hillside at the fall of
evening. About midnight and in a moment, the walls seemed to melt
away and to leave his bed floating on a pale misty light that shone
on every side as far as the eye could see; and after the first
blinding of his eyes he saw that it was full of great shadowy figures
rushing here and there.

At the same time the music came very clearly to him, and he knew that
it was but the continual clashing of swords.

'I am after my death,' he said, 'and in the very heart of the music
of Heaven. O Cheruhim and Seraphim, receive my soul!'

At his cry the light where it was nearest to him filled with sparks
of yet brighter light, and he saw that these were the points of
swords turned towards his heart; and then a sudden flame, bright and
burning like God's love or God's hate, swept over the light and went
out and he was in darkness. At first he could see nothing, for all
was as dark as if there was black bog earth about him, but all of a
sudden the fire blazed up as if a wisp of straw had been thrown upon
it. And as he looked at it, the light was shining on the big pot that
was hanging from a hook, and on the flat stone where Winny used to
bake a cake now and again, and on the long rusty knife she used to be
cutting the roots of the heather with, and on the long blackthorn