An Unvarnished History by Josephine Tey — Read

TO M / WHO MIGHT HAVE LIKED IT / OR MIGHT NOT / BUT IN ANY CASE / WOULD HAVE BEEN PLEASED

The boy stepped into the chill dark of the winter morning and closed the door quietly behind him. Quietly because the wife of Farmer Vass was apt to be unreasonable if she were wakened betimes. It lacked an hour till dawn and there was neither earth nor sky, hedge nor horizon. Only the all-enveloping dark, immediate, almost tangible--the blackness that hems us in with ourselves and annihilates philosophy. And it was bitterly cold. The boy clutched at his coat collar as the thin sterile air struck at his bare throat. His hobnailed boots echoed irrelevantly--a dreary sound--as he made his stumbling way over the cobbles of the yard and fumbled for the lantern that hung at the stable door. His sleep-sodden brain which had brought him thus far mechanically was waking to its daily passion of revolt.