THE SHOOTING STAR

I was out the other evening on the shore to the northward of Lochros, watching the men taking in the turf from the banks where it had been footed and dried. The wind was quiet, and there was a great stir of traffic on the road—men with creels, horses and carts, asses and children driving them. An old woman (a respectable beggar by her look) came by, and we started to talk. We were talking of various things—the beauty of the evening, the plentifulness of the turf harvest, the sorrows of the poor, and such like—when she stopped suddenly, and looked up into the sky. She gripped my arm. “Look, look,” she said, “a shooting star!” She blessed herself. There was a trail of silver light in the air—a luminous moment—then darkness. “That’s a soul going up out of purgatory,” she said.