'Mind taking a bit of advice,  master? I was  brung  up in a place like this.'

DOES IT BRING TEARS TO YOUR EYES?

     'A box of matches to me hand, more like. Listen

     The old man was only dimly aware of some whispering. He sat hunched up, staring at nothing.

WELL, IF YOU ARE SURE ...

     'Been there, done that, chewed the  bones,' said Albert. 'Charity ain't giving people what you wants to give, it's giving  people what they need  to get.'

VERY WELL.

     Death reached into the sack again.

HAPPY HOGSWATCH. HO. HO. HO.

     There was a string of sausages. There was a side of  bacon. And a small tub of  salt  pork. And a mass of chitterlings wrapped up in greased  paper. There was a black pudding. There  were several  other tubs of disgusting yet savoury porkadjacent items highly prized in any pig-based economy. And, laid on the table with a soft thump, there was...

     'A pig's head,' breathed the old  man. 'A whole one! Ain't had brawn in years! And a basin of pig knuckles! And a bowl of pork dripping!'

HO. HO. HO.

     'Amazing,' said Albert. 'How did you  get the head's expression to look like the king?'

     I THINK THAT'S ACCIDENTAL.

     Albert patted the old man on the back.

     'Have  yourself a ball,' he  said. 'In fact, have two. Now  I  think we ought to be going, master.'

     They left the old man staring at the laden board.

     WASN'T THAT NICE? said Death, as the hogs accelerated.

     'Oh, yes,' said Albert, shaking  his  head. 'Poor old  devil. Beans  at Hogswatch? Unlucky, that. Not a night for a man to find a bean in his bowl.'

I FEEL I WAS CUT OUT FOR THIS SORT OF THING, YOU KNOW.

     'Really, master?'

     IT'S NICE TO DO A JOB WHERE PEOPLE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

     'Ah,' said Albert glumly.

     THEY DON'T NORMALLY LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING ME.

     'Yes, I expect so.'

EXCEPT IN SPECIAL AND RATHER UNFORTUNATE CIRCUMSTANCES.

     'Right, right.'

AND THEY SELDOM LEAVE A GLASS OF SHERRY OUT.

     'I expect they don't, no.'

I COULD GET INTO THE HABIT OF DOING THIS, IN FACT.

     'But you won't need to, will you, master?' said Albert  hurriedly, with the horrible prospect of  being a permanent Pixie Albert looming in his mind again. 'Because we'll get the Hogfather back.. right?  That's what you  said we were going to do, right? And young Susan's probably bustling around ...

YES. OF COURSE.

     'Not that you asked her to, of course.'

     Albert's jittery ears didn't detect any enthusiasm.

     Oh dear, he thought.

I HAVE ALWAYS CHOSEN THE PATH OF DUTY.

     'Right, master.'

     The sleigh sped on.

I AM THOROUGHLY IN CONTROL AND FIRM OF PURPOSE.

     'No problem there, then, master.' said Albert.

NO NEED TO WORRY AT ALL.

     'Pleased to hear it, master.'

     IF I HAD A FIRST NAME, 'DUTY' WOULD BE MY MIDDLE NAME.

     'Good.'

NEVERTHELESS ...

     Albert strained his ears  and  thought  he  heard, just  on the edge of hearing, a voice whisper sadly.

HO. HO. HO.

     There was a party going on. It seemed to occupy the entire building.

     'Certainly  very  energetic  young men,'  said the  oh  god  carefully, stepping over a wet towel. 'Are women allowed in here?'

     'No,'  said Susan. She stepped through a wall into the superintendent's office.

     A group of young men went past, manhandling a barrel of beer.

     'You'll  feel bad about it in the morning,' said Bilious. 'Strong drink is a mocker, you know.'

     They set it up on a table and knocked out the bung.

     'Someone's going to have to be sick after  all that,' he  said, raising his voice above the hubbub. 'I hope you realize that. You think it's clever, do you, reducing yourself to the level of the beasts of the field ... er ... or the level they'd sink to if they drank, I mean.'

     They moved away, leaving one mug of beer by the barrel.

     The oh god glanced at it, and picked it up and sniffed at it.

     'Ugh.'

     Susan stepped out of the wall.

     'He hasn't been back for- What're you doing?'

     'I thought Id see what beer tastes like,' said the oh god guiltily.

     'You don't know what beer tastes like?'

     'Not  on the way down, no. It's ... quite different by the time it gets to me,' he said sourly. He took another sip, and then a longer one. 'I can't see what all the fuss is about,' he added.

     He tipped up the empty pot.

     'I suppose it comes out of this tap here,' he said. 'You know, for once in my existence I'd like to get drunk.'

     'Aren't you always?' said Susan, who wasn't really paying attention.

     'No. I've always been drunk. I'm sure I explained.'

     'He's  been  gone a couple  of  days,' said Susan. 'That's odd. And  he didn't say where he was going.  The last night he  was here was the night he was on Violet's list. But he paid for his room  for  the  week, and I've got the number.'

     'And the key?' said the oh god.

     'What a strange idea.'

     Mr  Lilywhite's  room  was  small. That  wasn't  surprising.  What  was surprising was  how neat it was, how carefully the little bed had been made, how well the floor  had been swept. It  was hard to imagine anyone living in it, but there were a few signs. On the simple table by  the  bed  was  a small, rather crude portrait of a bulldog in a wig, although  on closer inspection it might have been a woman. This tentative hypothesis was borne out by the inscription 'To a Good Boy, from his Mother' on the back.

     A book lay next to it. Susan wondered what kind of reading someone with Mr Banjo's background would buy.

     It turned out to be  a  book  of  six  pages, one  of those  that  were supposed to  enthral children with the magic of the printed word by pointing out that they could See Spot Run.

     There were no more than  ten  words on each  page  and  yet,  carefully placed between pages four and five, was a bookmark.

     She turned  back to  the  cover. The book was called Happy Tales. There was a  blue sky and  trees and a couple  of impossibly pink children playing with a jollylooking dog.

     It looked as though it had been read frequently, if slowly.

     And that was it.

     A dead end.

     No. Perhaps not ...

     On the floor  by the bed, as if it had been accidentally dropped, was a small, silvery halfdollar piece.

     Susan picked it up and tossed it  idly.  She looked  the  oh god up and down.  He was  swilling a mouthful  of  beer from cheek to cheek and looking thoughtfully at the ceiling.

     She wondered about his likelihood of survival incarnate in Ankh-Morpork at Hogswatch, especially  if  the cure wore off. After all, the only purpose of his existence was to have a headache and throw up. There were not a great many postgraduate jobs for which these were the main qualifications.

     'Tell me,' she said. 'Have you ever ridden a horse?'

     'I don't know. What's a horse?'

     In the depths of the library of Death, a squeaking noise.

     It was  not loud,  but  it  appeared louder  than  mere decibels  would suggest in the furtive, scribbling hush of the books.

     Everyone, it is said, has a book inside them. In this library, everyone was inside a book.

     The squeaking got louder. It had a rhythmical, circular quality.

     Book on book, shelf on shelf ... and in every  one, at the page of  the ever-moving now, a  scribble of handwriting following the narrative of every life ...

     The squeaking came round the corner.

     It was issuing  from what looked like a  very rickety edifice,  several storeys high. It looked rather like a siege tower, open at the sides. At the base, between  the wheels,  was  a pair of geared  treadles which moved  the whole thing.