Tom walked with his brother, Alfred. The men’s heels rang on the ground.

“It’s a fine night,” said Tom.

“Ay,” said Alfred.

“Nice to get out.”

“Ay.”

The brothers walked close together, the bond of blood strong between them. Tom always felt very much the junior to Alfred.

“It’s a long while since you left home,” he said.

“Ay,” said Alfred. “I thought I was getting a bit oldish—but I’m not. It’s the things you’ve got as gets worn out, it’s not you yourself.”

“Why, what’s worn out?”

“Most folks as I’ve anything to do with—as has anything to do with me. They all break down. You’ve got to go on by yourself, if it’s only to perdition. There’s nobody going alongside even there.”

Tom Brangwen meditated this.

“Maybe you was never broken in,” he said.

“No, I never was,” said Alfred proudly.

And Tom felt his elder brother despised him a little. He winced under it.

“Everybody’s got a way of their own,” he said, stubbornly. “It’s only a dog as hasn’t. An’ them as can’t take what they give an’ give what they take, they must go by themselves, or get a dog as’ll follow ’em.”

“They can do without the dog,” said his brother. And again Tom Brangwen was humble, thinking his brother was bigger than himself. But if he was, he was. And if it were finer to go alone, it was: he did not want to go for all that.

They went over the field, where a thin, keen wind blew round the ball of the hill, in the starlight. They came to the stile, and to the side of Anna’s house. The lights were out, only on the blinds of the rooms downstairs, and of a bedroom upstairs, firelight flickered.

“We’d better leave ’em alone,” said Alfred Brangwen.

“Nay, nay,” said Tom. “We’ll carol ’em, for th’ last time.”

And in a quarter of an hour’s time, eleven silent, rather tipsy men scrambled over the wall, and into the garden by the yew trees, outside the windows where faint firelight glowered on the blinds. There came a shrill sound, two violins and a piccolo shrilling on the frosty air.

“In the fields with their flocks abiding.” A commotion of men’s voices broke out singing in ragged unison.

Anna Brangwen had started up, listening, when the music began. She was afraid.

“It’s the wake,” he whispered.