She leant out and in a cloud of her own breath shouted: “Good evening. Can you be so good as to direct me to the Corpse?”

The man stared at her. After a long pause he said, “Ar?” The dog sat down and whimpered.

Mrs. Bünz suddenly realized she was dead-tired. She thought, “This frustrating day! So! I must now embroil myself with the village natural.” She repeated her question. “Vere,” she said speaking very slowly and distinctly, “is der corpse?”

“ ’Oo’s corpse?”

“Mr. William Andersen’s.”

“ ’Ee’s not a corpse. Not likely. ’Ee’s my dad.” Weary though she was she noted the rich local dialect. Aloud, she said, “You misunderstand me. I asked you where is the smithy. His smithy. My pronunciation was at fault.”

“Copse Smithy be my dad’s smithy.”

“Precisely. Where is it?”

“My dad don’t rightly fancy wummen.”

“Is that it where the smoke is coming from?”

“Ar.”

“Thank you.”

As she drove away she thought she heard him loudly repeat that his dad didn’t fancy women.

“He’s going to fancy me if I die for it,” thought Mrs. Bünz.

The lane wound round the copse and there, on the far side, she found that classic, that almost archaic picture — a country blacksmith’s shop in the evening.

The bellows were in use. A red glow from the forge pulsed on the walls. A horse waited, half in shadow. Gusts of hot iron and seared horn and the sweetish reek of horse-sweat drifted out to mingle with the tang of frost. Somewhere in a dark corner beyond the forge a man with a lanthorn seemed to be bent over some task. Mrs. Bünz’s interest in folklore, for all its odd manifestations, was perceptive and lively. Though now she was punctually visited by the, as it were, off-stage strains of “The Harmonious Blacksmith,” she also experienced a most welcome quietude of spirit. It was as if all her enthusiasms had become articulate. This was the thing itself, alive and luminous.