another, and I went back to my road. Peace still reigned, for the
shadows were lengthening, and there would be little more traffic
for the fair. I turned to my work, grateful for the stillness, and
saw on the white stretch of road a lone old man and a pig. Surely
I knew that tall figure in the quaint grey smock, surely I knew the
face, furrowed like nature's face in springtime, and crowned by a
round, soft hat? And the pig, the black pig walking decorously
free? Ay, I knew them.

In the early spring I took a whole holiday and a long tramp; and
towards afternoon, tired and thirsty, sought water at a little
lonely cottage whose windows peered and blinked under overhanging
brows of thatch. I had, not the water I asked for, but milk and a
bowl of sweet porridge for which I paid only thanks; and stayed for
a chat with my kindly hosts. They were a quaint old couple of the
kind rarely met with nowadays. They enjoyed a little pension from
the Squire and a garden in which vegetables and flowers lived side
by side in friendliest fashion. Bees worked and sang over the
thyme and marjoram, blooming early in a sunny nook; and in a homely
sty lived a solemn black pig, a pig with a history.

It was no common utilitarian pig, but the honoured guest of the old
couple, and it knew it. A year before, their youngest and only
surviving child, then a man of five-and-twenty, had brought his
mother the result of his savings in the shape of a fine young pig:
a week later he lay dead of the typhoid that scourged Maidstone.
Hence the pig was sacred, cared for and loved by this Darby and
Joan.

"Ee be mos' like a child to me and the mother, an' mos' as sensible