“Then tell me,” I said, “whence do you believe these moments come?  And will you give me half your onion?”

“With pleasure,” he replied, “for no man can eat a whole onion; and as for that other matter, why I think the door of heaven is ajar from time to time, and that light shines out upon us for a moment between its opening and closing.”  He said this in a merry, sober manner; his black eyes sparkled, and his large beard was blown about a little by the wind.  Then he added:  “If a man is a slave to the rich in the great cities (the most miserable of mankind), yet these days come to him.  To the vicious wealthy and privileged men, whose faces are stamped hard with degradation, these days come; they come to you, you say, working (I suppose) in anxiety like most of men.  They come to me who neither work nor am anxious so long as South England may freely import onions.”

“I believe you are right,” I said.  “And I especially commend you for eating onions; they contain all health; they induce sleep; they may be called the apples of content, or, again, the companion fruits of mankind.”

“I have always said,” he answered gravely, “that when the couple of them left Eden they hid and took away with them an onion.  I am moved in my soul to have known a man who reveres and loves them in the due measure, for such men are rare.”

Then he asked, with evident anxiety:  “Is there no inn about here where a man like me will be taken in?”

“Yes,” I told him.  “Down under the Combe at Duncton is a very good inn.  Have you money to pay?  Will you take some of my money?”

“I will take all you can possibly afford me,” he answered in a cheerful, manly fashion.  I counted out my money and found I had on me but 3s.7d.  “Here is 3s. 7d.,” I said.

“Thank you, indeed,” he answered, taking the coins and wrapping them in a little rag (for he had no pockets, but only holes).

“I wish,” I said with regret, “we might meet and talk more often of many things.  So much do we agree, and men like you and me are often lonely.”

He shrugged his shoulders and put his head on one side, quizzing at me with his eyes.  Then he shook his head decidedly, and said:  “No, no—­it is certain that we shall never meet again.”  And thanking me with great fervour, but briefly, he went largely and strongly down the escarpment of the Combe to Duncton and the weald; and I shall never see him again till the Great Day....

THE RETURN TO ENGLAND

In Calais harbour, it being still very early in the morning, about half-past five, I peered out to see how things were looking, for if that coast corresponded at all to ours, the tide should be making westerly by six o’clock that day—­the ebb tide—­and it was on the first of that tide that I should make the passage to England, for at sea you never can tell.  At sea you never can tell, and you must take every