The village of Ashcombe had two roads out of it, but only one that was worth walking after dark — the narrow lane that climbed past the old apple orchard on its way to the farms beyond. There were no street lights on that lane. There never had been.
Arthur Bennett had kept the orchard for as long as anyone could remember. He had kept it with his wife, Margaret, for thirty-four years, and then — after the winter she did not come home from the hospital — he had kept it alone. The trees did not care that he was grieving. They still needed pruning in February and thinning in June, and so he went out to them every day, because there was no one else to go. Neighbours offered to help. He thanked them and said he would rather do it himself, and they understood that he meant it kindly.
What no one understood, at first, was the lantern.
Every evening, just before dark, Arthur would take down the old storm lantern from its hook beside the door. He would light it, carry it out along the row of trees, and hang it on the gatepost at the top of the lane, where the track bent toward the village. Then he would go back inside and let it burn until morning.
The first person to notice properly was Tom, the paperboy, who pushed his bicycle up the lane at half past six every morning. He had never thought much about it — until one week in November the battery in his bicycle lamp died, and he had to walk the last mile in the dark, and he realised he had been able to see the whole way for months without ever once wondering why.
So he asked Arthur about it, one morning, at the gate. Arthur was quiet for a while. Then he said that Margaret had never liked the dark. On the evenings when she had come home late from the village, she used to say that she knew she was nearly home the moment she could see the orchard. So he kept the lamp lit on the gatepost, he said. "In case somebody else is walking home late and needs to know where home is."
Tom never told anyone. But the village learned it all the same — such things always travel. And the following winter, when Arthur spent a fortnight in hospital, the lamp on the gatepost still went out every evening, right on time. He asked, once, who had kept it burning. Everyone he asked said the same thing: they simply did not like to think of him coming home to a dark lane.
The orchard is gone now, sold and cleared long after Arthur was. The lane is still there, narrow and unlit, and so — on a small iron hook beside the gate — is the lantern. It is lit each evening by whoever passes, on the chance that somebody, somewhere, is walking home late and needs to know where home is.